Frequently Asked Questions

PitchVault is an institutional-grade deck analysis platform for founders and for the accelerator programs that run cohorts on it. Every deck uploaded is run through a structured, stage-calibrated scoring framework — the same criteria and weightings sophisticated investors apply when evaluating a deal — and scored across four dimensions: pitch quality (VaultScore™), defensibility (VaultMoat™), downside exposure (VaultRisk™), and operational execution capacity (VaultOps™).

The platform serves three audiences. Founders preparing to raise who want objective, investor-grade analysis before outreach. Accelerator programs and venture studios that run their cohort on the same read, with a Coach, a readiness call and an investor room. And the investors those programs invite into their rooms.

This is not a feedback generator. It is an investment readiness framework built on how institutional investors actually evaluate deals.

Three audiences.

Founders raising capital: early-stage founders preparing for angel or institutional rounds who want to know exactly where their deck stands before outreach — not a narrative summary, but a scored, rubric-based assessment against stage-specific benchmarks.

Invited investors: the investors a program invites to its cohort’s room. There is no application; the link signs them in, and every founder they see has been scored on the same rubric and marked ready by the director.

Accelerator and program partners: accelerators, incubators, and venture studios that want to embed investor-grade analysis across their cohort — with a shared workspace, portfolio-level scoring visibility, the Coach, and a structured program lifecycle from intake to the investor room.

Most pitch deck feedback tools produce a narrative summary — qualitative observations that change every time you run them and are optimised to sound encouraging rather than accurate. PitchVault produces a score.

Every deck is run through a structured rubric calibrated to the founder's funding stage. A Seed deck is held to different standards than a Series A. The output is a VaultScore™ out of 100, a section-by-section breakdown, slide-by-slide analysis, and red flags written the way an investor would surface them in a first meeting — not suggestions, signals.

Beyond the analysis, accelerator programs run their cohorts on it: a coach that reads the whole program, a readiness review the director makes with the numbers in front of them, and an investor room the director opens for the program’s own investors. Raise Ready is the bar everyone in the room is read against.

This is an institutional framework, not a deck review tool.

Generalist AI models produce feedback optimised to sound useful — they will identify strengths, offer suggestions, and tell you your deck is compelling. That is not how investors evaluate deals.

PitchVault applies the criteria institutional investors actually use to make funding decisions: market sizing logic, traction credibility relative to stage, team–problem fit, financial model coherence, and narrative integrity. Every deck is scored on the same rubric, against stage-specific benchmarks, so the result is comparable and consistent — a Seed deck is not evaluated as though it were a Series A.

The output is a VaultScore™ out of 100, a section-by-section breakdown, red flags phrased the way an investor would surface them in the first 15 minutes of a meeting, a prioritised action list, and — in the full analysis — VaultMoat™, VaultRisk™, and VaultOps™ scores covering the dimensions of the business that go beyond what the deck says.

Generalist AI cannot score you against a stage-calibrated rubric, tell you whether your risk profile is CRITICAL before you walk into a room, or give a program one read for every founder in its cohort. PitchVault does all three.

Yes. The Free Deck Scorer at /tools/deck-analyzer lets you upload your pitch deck and receive your VaultScore™ across all 8 dimensions — no account required. You will see exactly where your deck is strong and where it falls short against your stage-specific rubric.

The free tool does not include the written analysis, red flags, slide-by-slide breakdown, or the deeper Vault modules (VaultRisk™, VaultMoat™, VaultOps™, VaultRank™). Those come with the full investor-grade analysis — they are not in the free score.

The full analysis is free once you create an account — no card, no subscription. It unlocks your complete report: slide-by-slide investor-perspective analysis, all four Vault modules, and permanent shareable links.

Access codes (partner grants, program partner access, promotional codes) are redeemed inside your PitchVault account — not on the Stripe payment page.

While signed in, go to Settings → Plan & Billing. You will see a "Have an access code?" option below the plan options. Enter your code and access is applied immediately — no payment required.

Stripe promotion codes (percentage discounts at checkout) are different and must be entered on the Stripe payment page. Access codes bypass Stripe entirely and grant plan access directly for the duration specified in the grant.

The Free Deck Scorer at /tools/deck-analyzer gives you your VaultScore™ across all 8 dimensions — no account required. You see your overall score out of 100, every dimension score, and exactly where your deck is strong and weak against your stage-specific rubric. That is the extent of the free tool.

The full investor-grade analysis is free once you create an account — no card, no subscription. It unlocks your complete report: slide-by-slide investor-perspective analysis, VaultRisk™ (12 stage-calibrated risk dimensions), VaultMoat™ (defensibility assessment across 5 dimensions), VaultOps™ (operational execution score across 7 Theory of Constraints dimensions), VaultRank™ (percentile ranking and comparable raise benchmarks), permanent shareable links, full scoring history, the action roadmap, red flags, written section analysis, and the four lenses read against the bar for your stage. Your report shows how far you are from Raise Ready.

The free tool gives you the scores; the full analysis gives you everything else — free.

Raise Ready means all four investor lenses clear at your stage: Pitch Quality, Investor Defensibility, Risk Exposure (a ceiling, lower is better), and Execution Readiness. Your report shows each lens against its bar and what is needed to clear it.

It is a bar, not a gate. Outside a program it tells you the deck is ready to send. In a program it is the bar the director and the program’s investors read every founder against, and the director’s readiness call sits beside it.

No. For founders, PitchVault is free — no plan, no card, nothing to cancel.

Yes — the full founder experience is free: the four-lens analysis, the Action Plan, and every re-run. No card, no subscription.

Analysis quality is directly tied to deck content quality — decks with detailed, specific content (real metrics, named customers, explicit assumptions) receive the most precise feedback. Sparse decks with under 150 words of extractable text will trigger a low-confidence warning.

If you believe your report contains a material error — a dimension scored against the wrong stage, a red flag based on a misread claim, or a structural issue with the analysis — email support@pitchvault.ai with your report and the specific section in question. We will review it personally.

If your report does not deliver value, email support@pitchvault.ai and we'll take a look.

A rubric-based scoring system is used, calibrated to your selected funding stage (Pre-seed, Seed, Series A, Series B+) and sector. Each stage has different weighted criteria — for example, team and problem weigh more at Pre-seed, while traction and unit economics dominate at Series A. When you select a sector (e.g. SaaS, Biotech, Consumer), scoring and feedback are further calibrated to what investors in that sector prioritize. Your deck is scored across 8 sections; the final VaultScore™ is out of 100.

The full analysis includes four scores: VaultScore™, VaultMoat™, VaultRisk™, and VaultOps™. The three deeper modules are available immediately with no VaultScore™ gate. Raise Ready, all four lenses clear at your stage, is the bar a program’s director and investors read you against. That lens structure is separate from the funding stage you select for calibration. See "What are the four investor lenses on my report?" below.

The full analysis is structured around four investor lenses, each one mapping to a question investors ask when they evaluate a deal. This is separate from the funding stage you select for rubric calibration (Pre-seed, Seed, Series A, etc.).

Lens 1 — Pitch Quality: VaultScore™ and slide-by-slide analysis. Your overall score is previewable via the Free Deck Scorer. The full slide-by-slide analysis requires the full analysis.

Lens 2 — Investor Defensibility: VaultMoat™. Available immediately — no score gate.

Lens 3 — Risk Exposure: VaultRisk™. Available immediately — no score gate.

Lens 4 — Execution Readiness: VaultOps™. Available immediately — no score gate.

Raise Ready is not a fifth lens: it means all four investor lenses clear at your stage, with no deal-breaker blocker remaining. In a program, it is the bar the director and the investors read you against.

VaultScore™ bands (0–39 / 40–54 / 55–69 / 70–84 / 85–100) describe deck quality and are separate from lens access. "Raise Ready" has one meaning everywhere in the product: all four lenses clear at your stage, no cap in force, no core section at 4 or below, and no deal-breaker. The readiness pill on your report shows the same tier as your dashboard and the investor side.

Vault Badges are milestone markers you earn as you clear each investor lens and the Raise Ready milestone. There are four lens badges plus one milestone badge:

🎯 Pitch Quality — earned when your VaultScore™ clears the stage bar (65+ at Pre-seed and Seed).

🏰 Investor Defensibility — earned when your VaultMoat™ clears the stage threshold.

🔬 Risk Exposure — earned when your VaultRisk™ clears the stage threshold (lower is better for risk).

⚙️ Execution Readiness — earned when your VaultOps™ clears the stage threshold.

🏆 Raise Ready — earned when all four lens scores are cleared simultaneously.

Badges are visible in three places: your account settings (Vault Badges tab), the investor lens progression tracker on your report, and, in a program, in the investor room, where cleared score boxes turn green. Badges update automatically when you re-run an analysis and your score crosses a threshold. You can track which lenses you have cleared and what score is needed for the remaining ones in the Vault Badges tab under Settings → Vault Badges.

Yes. When you run an analysis, you select your sector (e.g. SaaS / Enterprise Software, AI / Machine Learning, HealthTech, Consumer). Sector-specific calibration is applied so that scoring and red flags reflect what investors in your sector actually look for — for example, NRR and land-and-expand in SaaS, clinical milestones and IP in Biotech, retention and LTV/CAC in Consumer. The VaultRank™ tab also shows comparable raises and benchmarks for your stage and sector. If you choose "Other" or a sector without a dedicated calibration, scoring uses stage-only criteria.

The scoring framework is grounded in how institutional investors evaluate deals at each stage — not a generic summary or sentiment analysis. Dimension weights shift by funding stage, so a Pre-seed deck is not scored on Series A traction standards. That structural calibration is the foundation of accuracy.

Analysis precision is also a function of deck quality. Decks with specific metrics, named assumptions, and clearly labelled slides produce the most precise findings. Sparse decks — under approximately 150 words of extractable content — will trigger a low-confidence warning, because the AI cannot score what is not on the page. Investors face the same constraint.

The analysis is a decision-support framework, not a guarantee of investor interest. A high VaultScore™ reflects strong deck quality against a rigorous rubric — it does not substitute for a compelling business or the right investor relationship.

A stage mismatch warning means the AI detected that your deck's actual content — traction, revenue, team maturity, product stage — does not match the funding stage you selected.

There are two directions a mismatch can go:

Upward mismatch (more common): you selected an earlier stage (e.g. Pre-seed) but your deck reads as a later stage (e.g. Seed). This is treated as a serious signal. When detected, your VaultScore™ is capped at 80 with a prominent banner naming the detected stage and a "Re-analyze as [Stage]" CTA. A 95 scored against the wrong rubric is not a credible 95 — the cap reflects that and gives you an accurate score to work from.

Downward mismatch: you selected a later stage but your deck reads as an earlier one — your scoring expectations are higher than your current evidence supports.

In both cases, re-running the analysis with the correct stage selected is always the right first step. Investors evaluate decks against stage-specific benchmarks, so a mismatch is one of the most common reasons decks get passed on in the first meeting.

PDF and PowerPoint files (.pptx, .ppt) up to 20MB are supported. PDF gives the most reliable text extraction and fastest processing. PowerPoint files are automatically converted to PDF via a cloud conversion service before analysis — this usually takes a few seconds and happens in the background. If your PowerPoint has unusual formatting or embedded media that does not convert cleanly, exporting as PDF directly from PowerPoint or Keynote will give the best results.

Yes. Pitch decks written in English, Chinese (Simplified), Japanese, Korean, and Arabic are supported. When you upload your deck, select the language it is written in from the deck language selector — this tells the AI to score your deck with the right market and language context.

The analysis output (scores, written feedback, and report) is always delivered in English, which is the standard language for international investor communications. This is intentional: founders raising capital from English-speaking investors benefit most from feedback written in the same language their investors think in.

Clicking the invitation link logs you in automatically (or creates your account if you don't have one yet) and takes you to a dedicated page explaining who sent the invitation and what they're asking.

If the investor attached your pitch deck, it will be pre-loaded in the analyzer — you just click "Run the analysis" and the deck is already there. If no deck was attached, you upload your own.

Once the analysis is complete, you'll see a prompt on your report to share the results with the investor. Sharing is one click and notifies the investor by email with a link to your report. You are always in control — sharing is optional and your report belongs to you.

The Fundability Gap is a callout on your report Summary tab that names the single most important thing between your current deck and a term sheet from the right investor. It is not a category to improve — it is the specific missing piece of evidence, milestone, or narrative element that, if added, would most materially change an investor's decision.

Examples: a verified free-to-Pro conversion rate, a signed letter of intent from a named pilot customer, or a stated churn assumption behind an LTV/CAC claim. The gap is derived directly from the claim analysis in your report, so it changes with each deck version as you close the gaps.

Every report includes two questions on the Summary tab under "Prepare for your investor meeting." These are derived from the specific gaps and unverified claims identified in your deck — not generic questions that apply to every startup at your stage.

They represent the questions a real investor would ask in the first 15 minutes of a meeting based on what is missing or asserted-without-evidence in your specific deck. Use them to prepare your answers before outreach. If you cannot answer them confidently today, that is the gap to close first.

VaultRisk™, VaultMoat™, and VaultOps™ each include additional targeted questions specific to the risks and gaps found in those analyses.

Yes. Many founders use it on early drafts to identify gaps before they start investor outreach. You can run a new analysis anytime on an updated version of your deck — each re-upload adds a data point to your scoring trend chart in your dashboard.

VaultScore™ credits real changes, not repeat submissions. Three rules govern how a re-run behaves:

New verifiable evidence is credited. When you add a real metric, named source, customer logo, pricing example, or any other concrete proof on a slide, the section it belongs to moves up. Items you close from your action roadmap are recognised explicitly — the engine cross-checks your latest deck against the prior roadmap and credits the work.

Sections you didn't touch hold steady. If you only edit Market and Traction, your Team and Ask scores carry their previous values. The re-score is anti-regression by design — re-running does not create random downward movement on areas you left alone. A section goes down only when the new deck carries new negative evidence the analyzer quotes, such as a metric that fell or a claim that was removed.

Re-uploading the same deck won't move the number. Without new on-slide evidence, the score is designed to stay stable. If the number didn't change, the deck didn't change in the way the engine measures.

The practical implication: put the evidence on the slides. The engine reads what investors will read. Metrics, sources, and proof kept only in your head, in your founder note, or in a side document will not score.

Yes. Your pitch deck content is treated as strictly confidential. We do not share, sell, or disclose your content to any third party. There are two sub-processors who handle your content to deliver the service:

1. Anthropic — our AI provider processes your deck content to generate your analysis. They do not use your content to train their models under our API agreement.

2. CloudConvert — if you upload a PowerPoint file, it is converted to PDF via CloudConvert before analysis. The file is processed transiently and not stored by CloudConvert beyond the conversion.

Your original deck file is stored in private, encrypted cloud storage and is never made public. Your report is private by default. There are two ways it can become visible to others:

• Share link: if you enable the share link on your report, anyone with the link can view the full report. You can disable this at any time.

• Investor platform access: a program's investors can only see your entry in the cohort's room once the director marked you ready, you confirmed the opt-in, and the director opened the room. Outside a program, no investor can access your report.

You are always in control. You can request deletion of your data at any time by emailing support@pitchvault.ai.

Yes, yourself, at any time. Go to Settings → My Account → Close account, type "delete", and the account is gone: every deck you uploaded, every report and score, your coach history, and your personal data, immediately and with no undo. If you are in an accelerator program, your program director is told you left. Organisation owners hand the organisation to another member first. You can also email support@pitchvault.ai and we will do it for you.

Your founder dashboard — we call it VaultRank™ — is the central hub for tracking your fundraising progress. It shows your current VaultScore™ and where it sits relative to all other founders on the platform (your percentile rank), a visual scoring trend chart across every analysis you've run, your single #1 priority to improve before your next investor conversation, and, if you are in a program, how many of the program's investors have viewed your entry in the room and any intro requests, plus platform-wide stats like what the average score looks like at your stage.

Your full analysis is organized around four investor lenses: VaultScore™, VaultMoat™, VaultRisk™, and VaultOps™. The deeper lenses are available immediately. See "What are the four investor lenses on my report?" for the full breakdown.

Your dashboard tracks your fundraising progress in one place. It shows your current VaultScore™ and your percentile rank vs other founders on the platform, a visual scoring trend chart across every analysis you've run, your single #1 priority to improve before your next investor conversation, and, in a program, how many of the program's investors have viewed your entry in the room and any intro requests.

The full dashboard is included with your free account. The Free Deck Scorer at /tools/deck-analyzer shows your scores only — no account or dashboard.

The score trend chart plots your VaultScore™ across every deck version you've uploaded, in chronological order. Each re-upload adds a new point. The chart helps you see whether the changes you're making are moving the score in the right direction — and how fast. Founders who apply their top priority actions typically see a 20–35 point improvement within 2–3 iterations.

When one of your program's investors opens the cohort's room and views your entry, that view is counted in your dashboard. You'll see the total number of investor views your deck has received. It is a signal that your deck is attracting attention — and a nudge to keep the deck ready before that attention becomes an intro request through your director. Outside a program there are no investor views: the report is yours alone.

An intro request is how an investor in your program's room says they want to meet you. In the room they see your four scores against the bar for your stage, the director's note, and the report while your share link is on. They click Request an intro, add a line if they want, and the request goes to your director, who makes the introduction. You are never contacted cold, and nothing happens outside the program.

An investor can also pass and say why. The reason goes to the director, not to you, and helps the program coach you.

Three things have to be true: the director marked you ready at the readiness review, you confirmed the opt-in email, and the director opened the cohort's room. Until all three are true, no investor sees you. Outside a program there is no room: you get the report and the re-run.

Through a program. An accelerator running its cohort on PitchVault invites its own investors to the cohort’s investor room: every founder scored on the same stage-calibrated rubric, the director’s readiness call already made, and intro requests routed through the platform. That room is the first thing an investor sees, and it is the whole product. There is no marketplace of unsolicited decks and nothing to browse: every founder an investor sees has been scored on the same rubric and marked ready by a director.

A founder in an accelerator program is seen by that program’s investors when three things are true: the director has marked them ready at the readiness review, they have confirmed the opt-in, and the director has opened the cohort’s room. A founder using PitchVault on their own gets the report and the re-run; there is no investor visibility outside a program.

Raise Ready, all four lenses clear at your stage, is the bar the director and the investors read you against. The room shows each founder's four scores against that bar, with the director's note beside them.

A Company Page is your investor-facing profile on PitchVault — a dedicated page at /company/[your-slug] that goes beyond the pitch deck score.

The editor is a 5-step wizard: Basics (URL, tagline, logo, cover image), Your pitch (founding thesis, product, business model), The raise (stage, amount, use of funds), and two optional steps — Team and Traction — you can skip and come back to.

Required before you can publish: founding thesis, product description, business model, raise stage, raise amount, and a cover image. The cover image is the hero of the public Company Page; without one the page falls back to a generic sector-coloured gradient.

A well-constructed Company Page gives an investor who reaches you everything they need to make a contact decision in under two minutes.

Company Pages are available to every founder. Set yours up at /dashboard/company-page. Pages stay in Draft until you click Publish — the publish status is also surfaced on Settings → Visibility.

Each lens has a bar calibrated to your stage. Raise Ready means all four are cleared: VaultScore™, VaultMoat™ and VaultOps™ at or above their bars, VaultRisk™ at or below its ceiling.

The room shows every founder's four scores against those bars, so the director and the investors read everyone the same way. Your report shows exactly where each lens stands, what is needed to clear it, and whether a deal-breaker flag is still in the way.

Only what the room shows. A program's investors see your deck cover, your company and one-liner, the four scores against the stage bar, the director's note and the verdict. The full report opens only while your share link is on, and you can turn it off at any time. Nothing is shared outside the program, and nothing is shared at all unless you confirmed the opt-in.

The VaultMoat™ is a proprietary score (0–100) that measures how defensible your business model is against well-funded competitors — higher is better on the 0–100 scale. It is separate from your VaultScore™, which scores pitch deck quality. The VaultMoat™ scores the underlying business — specifically, whether you have a structural moat that makes it hard for a $50M+ competitor to replicate your position.

It scores five dimensions: moat type and mechanism, evidence of the moat in action, compounding rate and trajectory, competitive stress test, and stage calibration and honesty. The score is generated automatically whenever you run an analysis.

0–35 (No moat): Investors pass before deep diligence. The product may be good, but there is no structural reason customers cannot switch to a well-funded competitor.

36–55 (Unproven): Investors push hard in the room. If the founder cannot explain the structural mechanism clearly, the deal stalls or gets repriced.

56–74 (Forming): Term sheet possible, but investors add milestones tied to moat evidence. Valuation gets argued down without proof of compounding.

75–89 (Strong): Conviction investment territory. Investors ask whether the gap is widening each quarter — a yes gets strong terms.

90–100 (Exceptional): Preemptive term sheets. Questions shift from "do you have a moat" to "what could break it in 10 years."

A moat is a structural competitive advantage that makes it hard — expensive, slow, or technically difficult — for a competitor to reach parity with you, even with significant capital and engineering resources.

Seven moat types are evaluated:

Data Flywheel: Your product improves as more data is collected, and competitors cannot access that data. The advantage compounds with scale.

Network Effects: The product becomes more valuable as more users join. Each new user increases value for all existing users — Metcalfe's Law applied to business.

Switching Costs: Customers face high friction (financial, operational, or workflow) to leave for a competitor. ERP systems, deeply integrated tools, and data-heavy platforms create this.

Unique Distribution: You have an exclusive, proprietary, or structurally privileged channel to customers that competitors cannot easily replicate — regulatory relationships, exclusive partnerships, or owned channels.

Regulatory Barrier: Licences, accreditations, FDA approvals, or government relationships create a structural barrier to entry that capital alone cannot overcome quickly.

Economies of Scale: Your unit economics improve structurally as you grow, making it harder for smaller competitors to match your cost structure.

Brand Trust: Deep customer trust — typically in high-stakes domains like healthcare, legal, or finance — that takes years to build and functions as a real switching cost.

"Moat strength" reflects whether the moat exists in evidence or only in the founder's narrative.

Strong: The moat is structurally present and evidenced in the deck — metrics, customer behaviour, or market position confirm it is working.

Emerging: The moat mechanism is plausible and the foundation is being built, but there is limited evidence it is creating durable advantage yet.

Weak: The moat mechanism is generic or undifferentiated. Competitors could replicate it with 6–12 months of focused engineering.

Asserted Only: The founder claims a moat exists but provides no structural mechanism or evidence to support the claim. This is the most common pattern — and the most dangerous one in investor meetings, because investors will stress-test it and the founder will not have answers.

Moat compounding describes the direction your competitive advantage is moving over time.

Accreting: The moat strengthens as the business grows. A data flywheel with more users, a network effect with more nodes, or switching costs that deepen with integration — these get harder to attack over time. This is what investors mean when they ask "does the gap widen?"

Static: The moat is real but does not meaningfully strengthen with scale. A regulatory licence, for example, does not compound — it blocks entry but does not widen the advantage over time.

Eroding: The moat is under pressure — from technology shifts, open-source alternatives, platform policy changes, or data portability mandates. An eroding moat often kills a deal at the term sheet stage.

The most common investor stress-test questions by score range:

0–35: "What happens when a well-funded competitor replicates this in 12 months?" and "Why can't your customers just switch?"

36–55: "What specifically prevents a $50M entrant from reaching feature parity?" and "Walk me through the structural mechanism — not the roadmap, the mechanism that exists today."

56–74: "Show me the evidence the moat is forming — what metric proves the gap is widening?" and "What is the single thing that could undo this advantage in 3 years?"

75–89: "Is the gap widening each quarter? By how much?" and "What could a regulatory change or technology shift do to this position?"

90–100: "What breaks this in 10 years — not what threatens it, what actually breaks it?" and "Who is the most dangerous potential entrant and why have they not moved?"

Your VaultMoat™ report includes the specific investor stress-test questions most likely to come up in your next meeting, based on your actual moat type and evidence.

The score is computed across five dimensions, each evaluated against your specific deck content — not generic criteria:

1. Moat Type & Mechanism (0–25 pts): How structurally durable is the moat category, and is the causal mechanism clearly explained? 2. Evidence of Moat in Action (0–30 pts): Is the moat evidenced with real data, or just asserted? Stage-calibrated — at Series A and beyond, quantified evidence is required. 3. Compounding Rate & Trajectory (0–20 pts): Does the moat get stronger over time, or is it static or eroding? 4. Competitive Stress Test (0–15 pts): How well does the deck address "what prevents a $50M+ entrant from reaching parity?" 5. Stage Calibration & Honesty (0–10 pts): Does the founder accurately represent the moat's maturity for the current stage — neither over-claiming nor under-articulating?

The five dimension scores sum to the final VaultMoat™ (0–100). The score is generated alongside your VaultScore™ on every analysis.

VaultRisk™ is a 0–100 downside exposure score that measures the risk investors see in your startup — separate from VaultScore™, which measures the quality of your pitch deck. Where VaultScore™ answers "is this a compelling opportunity?", VaultRisk™ answers "what could make this investment fail?" On this scale, a higher VaultRisk™ number means more exposure (worse); lower is better — the opposite direction from VaultScore™, VaultMoat™, and VaultOps™.

A high VaultScore™ with a HIGH or CRITICAL VaultRisk™ band is a common pattern — and a dangerous one: the deck looks good but the underlying business has material exposure that sophisticated investors will surface in diligence. Knowing both scores before you pitch means you walk in prepared.

VaultRisk™ scores your startup across 12 stage-weighted risk dimensions (names match the live rubric):

1. Market Timing: Is the market ready now, or is this a timing bet? 2. Market Size: Is the addressable market large enough to return a fund? 3. Competitive Moat: What prevents a well-funded competitor from replicating this in 18 months? 4. Team Execution: Can this team execute the plan they have presented? 5. Business Model: Is the revenue model clear, credible, and scalable? 6. Traction Validation: Is there evidence the market wants this at the price being asked? 7. Capital Efficiency: How much capital is required to reach the next fundable milestone? 8. Product–Market Fit: Is there strong evidence users find the product indispensable? 9. Concentration: Is the business dangerously dependent on one customer, channel, or partner? 10. Regulatory & Legal: Are there regulatory or IP risks that could impair the business? 11. Go-to-Market: Is the GTM motion scalable and credible for the stage? 12. Exit Risk (Series B+ only): Is there a credible path to liquidity for investors — M&A, IPO, or secondary? This dimension has 0% weight before Series B+.

Stage-calibration means the same risk matters differently at different points in a company's life.

At Pre-seed, Team Execution carries 20% of the score — because with no traction, the team is the only real signal. Traction Validation carries just 5%.

At Series B+, Traction Validation carries 22% — because by then, the market has had time to speak. Team Execution drops to 6%. Go-to-Market is 15% because investors need a proven, repeatable sales motion. Exit Risk carries 4% (0% at earlier stages).

VaultRisk™ applies the correct weights for your selected stage automatically, so a Seed deck is not penalised for lacking Series A-level traction evidence.

LOW (0–39): Strong evidence across all material dimensions for your stage. Investors see a well-controlled risk profile — risk is not a gating concern. Investor attention shifts to upside: market size, timing, and team.

MEDIUM (40–59): Normal risk for your stage. Investors see nothing surprising — the focus becomes which dimension to de-risk first with capital. Risk discussion becomes a capital allocation conversation, not a veto decision.

HIGH (60–79): Material exposure in multiple dimensions. Investors can still get to yes — but they spend diligence confirming the risks are understood and managed. Term sheets may include protective clauses and tranched funding.

CRITICAL (80–100): One or more dimensions carry existential risk. Investors will surface these in the first meeting — often as the reason they pass.

Certain risk patterns are so severe they trigger an Instant Pass Signal — a flag that means most investors will decline the deal before completing diligence. Common triggers include: founder team with zero relevant domain experience, no discernible revenue model, regulatory prohibition in the primary market, active IP litigation, or product that has not launched after 18+ months of development.

If your VaultRisk™ report shows an Instant Pass Signal triggered, address those issues before pitching. A great deck cannot overcome a fundamental structural issue that investors will catch in the first meeting.

If your deck does not provide enough information to score a dimension, VaultRisk™ flags it as INSUFFICIENT EVIDENCE rather than scoring it at a mid-range default. Missing information is treated as a risk signal in itself — investors facing an unanswerable question about market size, regulatory exposure, or team capability will price that uncertainty into their terms or pass entirely.

For each dimension flagged as insufficient, VaultRisk™ provides the specific evidence your deck should include to allow scoring.

VaultRisk™ is generated automatically on every analysis alongside your VaultScore™. No additional upload is needed — the same deck content is analysed for risk signals across all 12 dimensions (Exit Risk is weighted from Series B+ onward). The result is cached: returning to a report shows the same risk score instantly, with no re-run required. For analyses generated before VaultRisk™ was introduced, you can run a fresh analysis to get your score.

VaultOps™ is a 0–100 operational execution score (higher is better) that answers the question investors ask three weeks into diligence: "Can this team actually execute the plan they're pitching?"

Where VaultScore™ measures the quality of your pitch and VaultRisk™ measures downside exposure (where higher is worse), VaultOps™ measures whether the operational infrastructure is in place to deploy capital effectively. A compelling pitch with an operational gap often gets killed in diligence — VaultOps™ surfaces those gaps before the first meeting.

VaultOps™ scores your startup across 7 dimensions, each weighted by funding stage using a Theory of Constraints framework:

1. Primary Constraint Clarity: Can you name the single operational factor limiting your throughput right now — not a list, the one constraint? 2. Scaling Stress Readiness: If demand triples in 90 days, what fails first and by what mechanism? 3. Dependency Concentration: Are critical external dependencies named, understood, and managed? 4. Key-Person Risk: Is irreplaceable knowledge concentrated in one person with no transfer plan? 5. Capital-to-Throughput: Does the capital ask map to specific operational output — or is it a headcount budget without a throughput model? 6. Management Depth: Is there a management layer, or are founders still in every decision? 7. Operational Repeatability: Are critical processes documented in a form a new hire could execute independently?

Each dimension returns a specific finding based on your deck — not a generic observation that could apply to any company.

VaultOps™ returns one of four verdicts:

Execution-Ready (high score): Operations are not a gating concern. Investor attention moves to upside — market size, moat strength, and timing. Diligence is faster because the execution story holds under questioning.

Building Foundations: Core operational elements are present but gaps exist in one or more areas. Investors engage on substance but probe the specific gap — GTM missing, incomplete management layer, or key-person concentration.

Pre-Operational: Significant gaps in constraint awareness, scaling readiness, or management depth make the current raise premature relative to operational readiness. Most institutional investors will wait for specific milestones.

Execution-Risk (low score): Material execution risk across multiple dimensions. Investors who engage will price the risk heavily or require milestone-gated tranches. The most effective use of this score is identifying which gaps to close before the next raise.

VaultRisk™ measures downside exposure — the likelihood that external or structural factors cause the company to fail. It covers market timing, competitive threats, regulatory risk, capital efficiency, and investor-facing signals.

VaultOps™ measures internal execution capacity — whether the team and operational infrastructure can actually deploy capital and execute the plan. A company can have LOW VaultRisk™ (good market, strong moat, clean cap table) and still fail because the founders are doing everything themselves with no management layer and an unidentified binding constraint.

Both scores appear on every full analysis. The combination gives investors — and you — the full picture.

VaultOps™ is generated automatically on every analysis alongside VaultScore™. No extra upload or step is required — it reads the same deck content. The result is generated on demand when you open the VaultOps™ tab on your report, so it never slows down your core score. Once generated, it is cached — every return visit is instant.