Mandate 02 · Investor readiness
The first investor should not be the first person to find the gaps.
A raise rarely fails in the meeting. It fails in the room behind it: an unlock schedule that does not match the agreements, a model that cannot be rebuilt, a custody answer that changes under questioning. We run that diligence before an allocator does, then work the gaps in the order most likely to stop the process.
Seventy-two-hour first audit · No introduction required
Readiness work and verification are separate mandates on separate paper. This work does not issue a mark, a serial or an assessment.
Investor readiness
You will be diligenced either way.
Institutional investors test the cap table, unlocks, custody, governance and the quality of the paper behind every claim. We run that test first, while there is still time to fix what it finds. Send the data room; seventy-two hours later you know what holds, what fails and what an allocator will flag. The first audit is free.
The audit looks for concrete failure points: yield funded by inflation, fully diluted valuation detached from comparables, vesting that signals an exit, missing classification analysis, an improvised data room, or traction nobody outside the project can reproduce.
- 01 Audit Seventy-two hours on the data room. You get the gap list, ranked by what an allocator will flag first.
- 02 Fix Scoped work on tokenomics, documentation, governance and custody posture.
- 03 Re-read We read the room again, against the same published Standard. Still advisory — no mark, no serial.
- 04 Ready You go out with the gaps closed and the remaining ones named before an investor names them for you.
What gets tested
Six places an investor can stop the process.
- 01 Data room
- Missing documents, inconsistent figures, stale materials and claims that cannot survive a source check. Inventory · Reconcile · Source · Close
- 02 Cap table and unlocks
- Who owns what, when it can move, and whether the disclosed schedule matches the agreements underneath it. Map · Rebuild · Stress · Disclose
- 03 Token economics
- Inflation, treasury runway, fully diluted valuation, comparable pricing and the assumptions required to make the model hold. Model · Compare · Challenge · Repair
- 04 Governance and custody
- Control rights, signer concentration, treasury permissions, custody arrangements and the failure path if one key person disappears. Trace · Test · Document · Mitigate
- 05 Traction and market
- Revenue, users, liquidity and partnerships separated into what can be reproduced, what is represented, and what is still only a forecast. Verify · Attribute · Recast · Evidence
- 06 Investor materials
- The deck, model and diligence answers rewritten around the questions an allocator will actually ask, without hiding the unresolved ones. Prioritise · Rewrite · Rehearse · Deliver
The output is not a score. It is a ranked gap list, corrected investor materials and a record of what still cannot be supported. You decide whether to fix, disclose or stop.
The line
One thing we will never sell you: our own verdict.
A project we have advised cannot be assessed for six months. After that it can only be assessed with an independent reviewer on the file — someone who did no part of the advisory work, and who signs alongside the analyst. There is no staffing exception. The advisory working papers are quarantined from the assessment file.
Published policy, not case-by-case judgment. That separation is the whole reason passing the Standard would be worth anything. You are not buying a stamp — you are getting ready to earn one, from anyone.
Two lines and a deck. You will get a straight answer about whether we can help.
Capital formation
Introductions are the exception, not the product.
We may help with a raise when we have diligenced the project or sourced it ourselves, and when there is a specific investor fit. We do not circulate every project that reaches the desk. A readiness engagement is not a promise of fundraising or an introduction.