THE SCORECARD
Which of your companies does this describe?
The same six functional areas our diligence scores, 1 to 5 against what good looks like at the company’s stage, in about 10 minutes per company. Score one and you get a read on where its engine is strong and where it leaks. Score all of them and you get the portfolio on one page, which is usually the first time anyone has seen it that way.
How it works
Answer 18 questions about one company
Three per functional area, each with four plain answers to choose from. If you don't know an answer, that is a finding in itself, and the scorecard treats it as one.
Get the six scores and what they mean
Each area lands on a 1 to 5 with the sentence that describes that score, the same sentences our diligence readout uses, so you can compare your read with ours later.
Add the next company
Run it again for each portco and the view becomes a grid, six areas across and your companies down, with the weakest engine visible at a glance.
The six areas, and what a strong score looks like
Paid media
Spend efficient and trending the right way, with headroom to scale. A low score here is usually spend spread across too many campaigns for any of them to learn.
Content and SEO
Owns the bottom-of-funnel terms that describe what the company sells, with nurture in place. A low score means the category's demand is being captured by competitors or by nobody.
Website and conversion
Traffic turns into conversations at a rate the plan can live with. The most common 2 on the whole scorecard is a site that ranks and gets traffic and leaks at the visitor-to-lead step.
Data and attribution
Clean tracking across the funnel, so the board's questions can be answered from the system rather than from memory. A low score means nobody can say where deals come from.
Martech stack
The tools can run the plan. A 3 is functional but aging and needs investment; a 1 is two overlapping stacks after an acquisition that nobody has reconciled.
Marketing team
A capable lead in place who can scale under the right structure. A low score is a team built for a different go-to-market than the one the plan assumes, or nobody accountable for pipeline at all.
Scores are read in context. What counts as strong depends on the company's stage, budget and go-to-market, which is why the diligence readout is as much judgment as measurement, and why this scorecard is a first pass rather than a verdict. The value is in the pattern across the six.
Score a company.
Tell us which company you want to start with, and we’ll send the 18 questions and score them with you.
- Or have us run the full assessment