No black boxes, no magic, no hidden learning. Every step of our review process is visible, inspectable, and reversible. The human partner is the final authority at every point where authority matters.
The founder submits a pitch through our portal. We capture the raw content verbatim and preserve it for the audit trail — nothing is rewritten silently.
The platform extracts a structured profile: problem, solution, market, model, traction, ask, founders. Missing fields are flagged as missing. They are never inferred or invented.
A language model composes a structured memo — summary, team read, creativity read, viability read, strengths, weaknesses, open questions, confidence level. Output is validated against a schema before it reaches the partner.
A 1-to-5 investment score, with the six-dimension breakdown and a confidence percentage. Rationale cites specific evidence. Unknowns are stated explicitly — missing data reduces confidence, not score.
A Connect Ventures partner reads the memo, the score, the breakdown, and the evidence. They can accept, decline, or override. Override carries a required reason and a free-text note.
Every override becomes a structured feedback event. Periodically, the team reviews aggregate drift — by sector, by category, by reviewer — and proposes weight or prompt adjustments. Changes are versioned and simulated before they go live.
Unlikely investment candidate.
Substantial concerns.
Interesting but unresolved.
Candidate for further review.
Very high interest.
We care most about team and market. Traction is a useful signal but a noisy one at seed stage. Clarity earns a small weight because a well-structured pitch tells us something about how the founder thinks.