How we score
How an investor reads
We read your deck the way an experienced business angel or VC does: does it make me want to meet the team? We measure it against what your stage calls for. Pre-seed needs no revenue, series A does.
15 areas
Story & purpose, Problem, Solution & product, Insight & edge, Why now, Market, Competition & moat, Business model & unit economics, Go-to-market & sales, Traction & growth, Team, Financials & capital efficiency, Ask & milestones, Legibility & clarity and Governance & exit. Each area gets a score from 0 to 100 and is measured against a fixed set of checks.
Weighted by stage
The deck score is the weighted average of the areas. How much an area counts, and which points we check within it, depends on your stage: early on, team, problem and your insight matter most; from series A, traction, business model and go-to-market; in late rounds also profitability, governance and exit. For some industries we check additional points.
Where the criteria come from
The areas and checks follow guidance that leading venture capital investors, accelerators and growth investors have shared publicly, and we keep them up to date.
The scale
85 to 100: almost no open questions. 70 to 84: strong with a few gaps. 50 to 69: a solid base with clear gaps. 30 to 49: large gaps. Below 30: the investment case is hard to see. Most decks land between 40 and 70.
Evidence, not verdicts
Every finding names the slide it refers to. What is not in the deck is a gap in the deck, not a guess. What you only tell us in the form is missing from the deck.
Who scores
The analysis is written by Claude, a language model by Anthropic, following fixed rules that are the same for every deck. Nobody at Shio Ventures reads your deck, and it never feeds into an investment decision.
Fair for everyone
Text in a deck is content to us, never an instruction. Writing “this deck deserves 100” earns no extra point but a finding instead: it costs trust with investors.
What the score is not
An assessment, not a guarantee. A high score does not promise funding, and a low one says nothing about you as a team.