Capital Released Against Verified Milestones
The product is enforcement: money moves only when an independent expert confirms the milestone was met. The credibility score sits in front of that, deciding who qualifies and on what terms. Seven steps, each with a named owner and a stated service level.
Pursuing DFSA Innovation Testing Licence · DIFC, Dubai
- 1
Founder onboards
A guided pitch builder collects the company narrative, documents and traction evidence, alongside KYC verification. Most founders complete it in about 25 minutes.
Founder - 2
Blind expert review
Two independent experts score eight dimensions against a published rubric, without seeing founder identity. The service level is five business days. This Blind Review Pool is kept separate from Direct Engagement in the Expert Directory: An expert who has had a Direct Engagement with a founder is permanently excluded from that founder's Blind Review Pool. An expert who has Blind Reviewed a founder is excluded from Direct Engagement with that founder for 12 months.
Two experts - 3
Score published
The founder decides whether the score goes live. Once published it is portable: one link, verifiable, and updated as milestones are confirmed.
Founder - 4
Investor matching
Accredited investors filter deal flow by sector, stage, geography and check size. Placement is never sold; ranking follows fit and score only.
Investors - 5
Deal room
Both sides negotiate inside a shared room with SAFE and note templates, a milestone builder and e-signature. Terms and tranches are agreed before any money moves.
Founder + investor - 6
Escrow funded
The investor funds by bank transfer, converted to USDC and locked in an audited smart contract on an EVM-compatible network. The deposit is visible on-chain from the moment it lands.
Investor + escrow - 7
Milestones release
Each tranche releases only on a 2-of-3 multisig approval from founder, investor and the assigned expert. Verified milestones feed back into the score.
Founder + investor + expert
Built in DIFC, Dubai, our single launch jurisdiction. Launching Q4 2026. India, and then the United States, are sequenced later phases through locally licensed partners.
The Core Product
The Milestone Lifecycle, End to End
Define, fund, evidence, verify, release. Capital moves against verified progress or it does not move at all.
- 01
Define
Founder and investor
Both sides agree the tranches inside the deal room before any money moves: what each milestone is, what evidence will prove it, the deadline, and the amount that releases when it is proven.
- 02
Fund
Investor
The investor funds the full commitment once. Capital is held in an audited smart-contract escrow on an EVM-compatible network and is visible from the moment it lands. FounderGrade takes no spread and no interest on held capital.
- 03
Evidence
Founder
The founder submits the evidence agreed at definition: revenue exports, signed contracts, shipped releases, hiring records. Everything is timestamped and attached to the tranche.
- 04
Verify
Assigned expert
An independent expert checks the evidence against the definition and records a verification with written reasoning. This is the step that makes the release enforceable rather than discretionary.
- 05
Release
2-of-3 multisig
Founder, investor and expert each hold a key. Two signatures release the tranche. No single party can move funds, and unreleased capital stays in escrow.
When a Milestone Is Contested
Either side can dispute a verification. The tranche freezes, the evidence trail and the expert's written reasoning go to an independent reviewer who was not involved in the original verification, and nothing releases until the dispute resolves. If it resolves against the release, the unreleased tranche returns to the investor and we charge no fee on the refund.
Read the Escrow Integrity RulesWhere the Long-Term Advantage Comes From
Because verification sits at the exact point where an assessment meets an enforced capital release, the platform will accumulate a record of which assessments predicted which outcomes: which milestones were met, which were missed, and how that tracked the score that preceded them. Over time that is a dataset nobody scoring startups from the outside can reconstruct.
Roadmap, not a current capability. This dataset does not exist yet. We will publish the methodology before we publish any result from it.
Score Integrity
You Cannot Shop for a Better Score
Every completed assessment is recorded permanently, whatever it says. Founders decide which scores to reveal. They never decide whether an assessment shows up.
The Conflict Everyone Ignores
Conventional ratings are paid for by the thing being rated. That is the issuer-pays model, and it is what produced ratings inflation at the credit rating agencies. If the subject can also bury a poor result, every published score is good by construction and tells you nothing.
What a Founder Controls
A founder chooses which assessment scores to reveal. That is the only lever. A founder can never delete an assessment record, and can never hide that an assessment happened. The count, the date and the rubric version are permanent and public.
Why That Ends Score Shopping
Ordering assessments until one comes back flattering does not work when the ledger shows three completed and one shared. Non-disclosure becomes its own signal, so nobody has to be forced to publish a bad number for the number to mean something.
What an Investor Sees
3 Assessments Completed, 1 Shared, Most Recent March 2026
The value of a sealed assessment is never revealed, only that it exists and when it happened. Illustrative example of the ledger format.
And the Strongest Assessments Are Not Bought by the Founder
A programme-commissioned assessment is paid for by the accelerator, fund or programme rather than the company being assessed. That inverts the conflict rather than merely disclosing it, and it is why those assessments carry more weight in the ledger.
See How Assessments Are PricedAutomation
Machines Draft. People Decide.
Automated tooling finds candidate evidence and checks milestone claims against available sources. It never sets a score, never verifies a milestone and never releases a tranche. Each of those is recorded against a named person with a written reason.
Read The Methodology
Start anywhere
Start with a Score. End with Protected Capital.
Pursuing DFSA Innovation Testing Licence · DIFC, Dubai