The Intro Fund is a fund-shaped evaluation lens with no capital. It evaluates every opportunity that enters the Dealtable ecosystem — a research disclosure at a TTO, an idea in an incubator, a cohort applicant at an accelerator, a deal in a fund's pipeline — with the discipline of an investor who must decide. What it invests is introductions.
Fund I holds $100 of committed capital in intro-dollars. Every introduction costs $1. At full deployment the vintage is graded and Fund II opens.
What this is not. The Intro Fund deploys no money, takes no equity, negotiates no terms, and gives no investment advice. "Fund" describes its evaluation discipline and its budget mechanics, nothing else.
The spike that makes a company a pass for one organisation is precisely what makes it fund-returning for another.
The best early-stage opportunities look uneven. They have a founder, product, insight, invention or rate of progress that is unusually strong before the rest of the company is fully formed — and the organisation holding that opportunity is rarely the organisation whose thesis exists to find it. Routing an outlier to the right thesis is worth more than any one fund's yes or no.
Investment thesis
Fund I holds $100 of committed capital in intro-dollars. Every introduction costs $1. When the capital is fully deployed, Fund I closes, the vintage is graded on match outcomes, and Fund II opens with parameters updated from what Fund I learned.
They have a founder, product, insight, invention or rate of progress that is unusually strong before the rest of the company is fully formed. One extraordinary, well-evidenced strength outweighs weaknesses that are visible, explainable and fixable.
The spike that makes a company a pass for one organisation is precisely what makes it fund-returning for another. Routing an outlier to the thesis that prizes its particular spike is worth more than any one fund's yes or no.
When every opportunity across the ecosystem is evaluated the same way, differences between opportunities are real signal rather than evaluator noise — and routing on those differences becomes possible.
Dealy is the analyst on the Intro Fund and evaluates under this thesis exactly as it would for any organisation on the platform — same templates, same rubrics, same evidence discipline. Evaluation is free and universal; only introductions spend capital. The terminal act is an introduction, not a cheque, and people decide on both sides of it: the originating organisation consents to identity release, the receiving organisation decides what to do with what it receives.
The Intro Fund routes dealflow across the ecosystem to the organisation whose thesis prizes it. Every well-judged introduction demonstrates the platform's evaluation quality to both sides of the match, and commercial outcomes for Dealtable follow from that. A matcher optimised for touchpoints becomes a spam engine and spends the trust it needs to operate. The Intro Fund is graded on match outcomes alone.
Match quality is the objective function; sales are a consequence, never a criterion.
Fund mandate
Committed capital $100. Cheque size $1 — one introduction of one opportunity to one partner organisation. The fund closes at full deployment; the vintage is graded; Fund II opens.
The full intake spectrum: person, conversation, idea, project, investment. Stage never gates evaluation. It is captured as an attribute and matched against each partner's stage bounds.
Geography is a matching dimension — partners hold geographic theses; the Intro Fund holds none.
Agnostic within technology and technology-enabled ventures — deep tech to SaaS to space. Sector is a characterisation dimension, never a filter.
Every evaluated opportunity leaves with (a) a house characterisation — spikes with evidence grades, flags, and a capital-path judgment — and (b) either one or more introductions invested, or a formal no-match with the binding constraint and the unlock milestone named.
What we characterise
None of them is a requirement. They describe the company; they do not screen it.
The founding team's ability, urgency, integrity and connection to the problem.
The problem: how painful, how frequent, how economically important, and for which identifiable customer.
The product or technical insight, and whether it is a step-change or an increment.
Evidence of speed: rate of learning, delivery cadence, adoption, revenue or technical progress relative to age and resources.
The market ceiling, and whether a credible wedge-to-category path exists.
Business model quality: margin potential, repeatability, compounding advantage.
Round economics: what is being asked, through which instrument, at what terms — and which capital types those economics suit.
What we flag
No articulable customer problem yet.
Routes toward incubation-stage partners, not capital.
A services business without a credible path to a scalable product.
Not venture-shaped; may match no venture partner on the platform. Recorded honestly rather than dressed up.
Growth that depends on unsustainable discounts, one-off contracts or founder relationships.
The Progress spike is discounted accordingly.
AI features with no proprietary workflow, distribution, data advantage or learning loop.
Invention and 10x are discounted accordingly.
Capital requirements unmatched by realistic technical, regulatory or commercial milestones.
Creates an economics mismatch against most partner bounds; conditional-match territory.
Governance, integrity, security or legal risks that cannot be responsibly mitigated. Zero dollars invested. Routed to no one. Reasons recorded.
The Intro Fund's capital is the network's trust, and every unearned introduction spends it.
The spike framework
Adapted from Startmate's approach to early-stage selection. An opportunity's strongest spike, and the quality of evidence behind it, determines where it routes and with how much confidence.
Independently verifiable; would survive the receiving partner's own diligence.
Introduction invested
Consistent supporting evidence with named gaps.
Introduction invested
Asserted, not yet verified.
Evidence request, not an introduction
Founders we would buy stock in as people: unusually capable, determined, self-aware and able to attract exceptional colleagues.
Evidence
Routes toward: accelerators, founder-first pre-seed capital, and incubators when maturity is early.
Evidence the company is learning and moving faster than expected for its age and resources.
Evidence
Routes toward: traction-indexed seed funds; co-invest partners when a lead is present on the round.
New technology, scientific capability, technical architecture or process innovation that creates a meaningful leap.
Evidence
Routes toward: deep-tech funds; TTO commercialisation pathways when the work is research-origin; science-focused incubator and accelerator programmes.
Founders who see a compelling future before it is obvious and can explain the non-consensus insight that makes the company possible.
Evidence
Routes toward: thesis-driven and contrarian funds; venture studios.
A product that is not merely better, but dramatically faster, cheaper, easier, more accessible or higher quality.
Evidence
Routes toward: funds underwriting displacement economics; growth-leaning seed capital.
Introductions are invested on unmistakable and probable spikes. Claimed spikes generate evidence requests back to the originating organisation, not introductions.
Why it matters
An introduction carries the Intro Fund's judgment into someone else's inbox. If the evidence would not survive the receiving partner's own diligence, sending it spends trust the fund cannot replace — so the dollar stays in the ledger and the evidence request goes out instead.
Recorded either way: the house characterisation is returned to the originating organisation whether or not a dollar is spent.
Partner thesis registry
Fund, accelerator, incubator, TTO, family office or co-invest vehicle, venture studio. An accelerator's cohort screen, an incubator's intake criteria and a TTO's commercialisation pathway are rounds of their own kind; the Intro Fund matches opportunities to stated intake theses, not only to cheques.
Binary screens. An introduction is never invested outside them.
Scored, not screened.
A partner's registry entry starts from its stated thesis — the public-judgment corpus for ecosystem organisations, the configured thesis for organisations on the platform — and is graded over time by its revealed responses to introductions. Stated policy seeds the registry; revealed decisions correct it.
An organisation's thesis is used only to route opportunities to that organisation. No organisation's private judgment stream ever characterises another organisation's opportunity — the house read comes from the Intro Fund's own lens alone. Matches surface on de-identified signal first; identity moves only with the originating organisation's consent.
Match rule
A collection of acceptable fits across a partner's checklist does not substitute for the one reason this partner should want this company. An introduction is invested only when three tests pass together.
The opportunity's strongest evidenced spike is what the partner's thesis exists to find.
Stage, sector, geography, round economics or programme fit, institutional and lead/follow bounds.
The evidence grade meets that partner's stated threshold.
Each additional dollar on the same opportunity must independently clear all three tests with a distinct partner rationale. We do not hedge uncertainty about who wants a company by introducing it to everyone. Maximum exposure: $3 per opportunity per vintage.
When no partner clears the test, we say so — with the binding constraint named and the milestone that would change the answer. An honest, reasoned no is half the value the Intro Fund returns to the supply side.
The budget, not a policy, is what makes each introduction carry information. A matcher that matches everything is a spam engine; a fund that runs out of dollars has to mean every one it spends.
Key investment questions
Three question banks, written as structured records per opportunity. They power the house characterisation and the match memo.
Where does the company sit within technology or technology-enabled ventures, and what sector-native context applies?
What is the sector's realistic market size, growth rate and value pool?
What has changed in technology, regulation, cost or customer behaviour to make this the right time?
Is the market concentrated, fragmented or dominated by incumbents, and how does that shape the path to entry?
Which sector-specific risks could prevent the company from reaching venture scale?
Does the Intro Fund have enough knowledge, network access or external expertise to characterise this sector responsibly?
Which partner archetypes does the sector picture point toward, and which hard bounds does it immediately rule in or out?
Who is responsible for the technical architecture and product delivery?
What has the founding team built, researched or operated before that demonstrates technical depth?
Can the team explain the system, model, data pipeline or scientific method at the level expected of a technical founder?
Which parts of the technology are proprietary, and which depend on third-party platforms or models?
How are quality, security, privacy, reliability and technical risk measured and managed?
What technical milestones must be reached before the next financing or programme stage?
Can the founders attract and manage the technical talent required for the next stage?
Does the technical picture support an Invention spike, and at what evidence grade? Which partners' evidence bars does it clear?
The Intro Fund characterises the round; it never negotiates it. The purpose of this bank is matching the ask to partner bounds.
How much capital is being asked for, and why is that the right amount?
What pre-money and post-money valuation is offered, and through which instrument — or what programme terms apply?
What ownership could a partner obtain at the proposed terms and typical cheque sizes in range?
How much runway does the ask provide under the base plan and downside case?
Which product, technical, regulatory, customer and revenue milestones will the capital or programme fund?
Are the terms justified by the spike, traction, market, team and comparable financings?
What dilution, option-pool changes, investor rights or outstanding securities affect the effective price?
Can this entry point produce a fund-returning outcome for the partner archetypes whose bounds it falls within?
Is a lead present, committed or absent — and which co-invest partners does that answer switch on or off?
Which partners' cheque and ownership bounds does this round fall inside, and does the structure fit their model?
How the Intro Fund runs
The Intro Fund lives in VC-HQ's agents and is expressed in the same thesis structures every organisation on Dealtable configures, so its evaluation is identical in kind to any real fund's.
Because the lens is constant across the whole ecosystem, its characterisations are comparable across organisations: the baseline against which any single organisation's thesis is a legible overlay.
Process
Portfolio construction
Committed capital in intro-dollars. At full deployment the vintage closes.
One opportunity introduced to one partner organisation, with its memo attached.
Each additional dollar must independently clear all three tests with a distinct partner rationale.
Reserved for re-introductions. A no-match or conditional-match opportunity that hits its named unlock milestone has first claim on reserve capital.
No partner absorbs more than a tenth of a fund; breadth is how the fund learns the ecosystem and how the ecosystem learns the fund.
Sector and stage concentration is monitored, not capped — the fund follows the dealflow it actually receives.
Each invested dollar resolves on a ladder.
Declined or no response, with the reason recorded.
A meeting is taken.
Diligence, cohort interview or IP negotiation entered.
Term sheet, cohort offer, licence or option.
Investment closed, cohort accepted, or commercialisation agreement signed.
Fast signal grades the matcher. The slow signal — completed matches tracked to next round, revenue and outcome over time — is the only truth about whether the match was right, and it is never traded away for fast-signal performance.
At vintage close, the graded ledger sets Fund II's parameters: cheque caps, reserve ratio, partner caps, evidence thresholds, and registry corrections. Each vintage is a comparable cohort; the fund's judgment compounds across them.
Match committee memo
The Intro Fund is investing $[n] to introduce [company] to [partner] because its [Team / Progress / Invention / Unique Vision / 10x] spike — graded [unmistakable / probable] on [specific evidence] — is what [partner]'s thesis exists to find. Mandate fit: [stage / sector / geography / economics or programme terms / institutional and lead bounds]. The company is solving [problem] for [customer] with a credible path to [an outcome consistent with the partner's return or programme model]. The key non-consensus belief is [insight], which [partner] is positioned to underwrite because [reason]. Open evidence gaps: [gaps]. Principal risks: [risks], acceptable to this partner because [reason]. Vintage ledger: $[spent] deployed, $[remaining] remaining.
The Intro Fund is investing $0 in [company] at this time. House characterisation: [strongest spike and grade, flags]. The binding constraint is [constraint]. This becomes matchable when [milestone], at which point it has first claim on reserve capital. Recorded for the originating organisation with reasons in full.
Funds, accelerators, incubators, TTOs, venture studios and co-invest vehicles are all represented in one schema. Register your hard bounds and your prized spikes, and the Intro Fund routes to them — or tells the originating organisation honestly why it cannot.
Register your thesis →The Intro Fund deploys no money, takes no equity, negotiates no terms, and gives no investment advice. "Fund" describes its evaluation discipline and its budget mechanics, nothing else.