Calendar concentration rose 31% to 68% in eight months.
Evidence · calendar + Slack metadata · 8 months
Operational due diligence
The deal looks right. The company isn’t.
Zoe measures the nine health dimensions financial diligence can’t see. Claims checked against the target company’s own systems with a scored readout inside 24 hours.
Illustrative example
- Calendar concentration rose 31% → 68% in eight months· Culture & People
- Top three accounts moved from 41% to 58% of ARR· Product & Customer
- Weekly deploys fell from 21 to 14 as headcount doubled· Delivery & Execution
- Engineering and Product stopped talking on 15 December· Culture & People
- Runway math consistent across board pack and ledger· Financial Vitality
- Production access held by two engineers, both founders· Risk
The pattern
The numbers passed. The wheels came off six months later.
Audits read balances. Interviews read opinions. Neither read the real operating behavior.
The founder’s calendar closed in.
Meeting load nearly doubled and unbroken thinking time fell under four hours a week.
Revenue gathered into three accounts.
Top-three concentration moved from 41% to 58% of ARR while total ARR grew 12%. The growth was coming from accounts already in the book.
The team shipped less as it grew.
Engineering went from 14 people to 29 while weekly deploys fell from 21 to 14. Review latency tripled in the same window.
Portfolio
Meridian Capital
12 active diagnosticsBrief
Portfolio
Diagnostics3
Findings
Settings
← All funds
◉ Monday · 30 Jun · 7:42 AM
Project Cephei · what moved this month.
Live health, material changes, and the decisions that need you before the committee meets.
Zoe Score64● AttentionFirst readout on this case
82%
Coverage
84%
Confidence
4
Open findings
9 / 9
Dimensions scored
What Zoe noticed before close.Three material changes
Top three accounts went from 41% to 58% of ARR.
Evidence · 3 CRM pulls · 8 months
Weekly deploys fell from 21 to 14 as headcount doubled.
Evidence · GitHub deploy events · 8 months
Dimension pulse · 9 of 9 scoredView all dimensions →
Financial Vitality74
Product & Customer41
Delivery & Execution58
Culture & People61
Project Cephei64/ 100Attention
What Zoe noticed before close.Three material changes
Calendar concentration rose 31% to 68% in eight months.
Evidence · calendar + Slack metadata · 8 months
Top three accounts went from 41% to 58% of ARR.
Evidence · 3 CRM pulls · 8 months
Weekly deploys fell from 21 to 14 as headcount doubled.
Evidence · GitHub deploy events · 8 months
Nine of nine dimensions scored · Illustrative example
The premise
Slides say what a company claims.
Systems record what it does.
Zoe reads both and shows the gap.
How a case runs
From the founder’s deck to the IC’s desk.
You do three things: add the deck, invite the target, hold one founder call. Zoe does the rest, and the Readout Package is ready inside 24 hours of the run.
01
Open the case
Pick a package and open a case on the company you are looking at. Add its pitch deck first: Zoe turns it into a Claim Ledger, a list of every claim the deck makes, one per row. Add data-room files if you have them.
02
Invite the target
Zoe sends the target a secure link. Whoever holds the keys there (often the CEO, CFO or an admin) accepts the data processing agreement and connects the company’s own systems (accounting, CRM, GitHub, Jira, Slack) read-only. Read-only means Zoe can look, never change anything, and the target can switch it off. You never hold a password.
03
Said vs True
Once the books connect, Zoe checks the deck’s claims against what the company’s own systems show, claim by claim. It reads patterns from those systems, never the paragraphs people wrote.
04
Founder Call
Where the deck and the systems disagree, Zoe writes the questions. You hold one call with the founder and upload the transcript. Each answer is marked answered, dodged, or contradicted.
05
Run the Zoe Diagnostic
You start the run. Zoe scores the company on nine dimensions of operating health and rolls them into one Zoe Score, with a confidence percentage and a coverage tier.
06
Readout and close
Inside 24 hours of the run you have the Readout Package: the score, the findings, an IC memo, a signed opinion when the evidence is strong enough, and the evidence appendix. Then seal the case, or keep monitoring on the Portfolio package.
Where Zoe differs
Behavioral. Predictive. Twenty-four hours.
Three things a quality-of-earnings review cannot do.
Without Zoe
Forty management interviews produce forty impressions, and an impression has no date attached.
“Communication across the teams is strong.”
VP Engineering · interview, 14 Jun
“The founder is stretched but managing it.”
Chief of Staff · interview, 19 Jun
“Our top accounts are stable and growing.”
CRO · interview, 21 Jun
No date. No counter-evidence. Nothing to check.
With Zoe
One dated behavioral change, the pull that proves it, and the founder’s answer to it, scored.
Engineering and Product stopped talking on 15 December.
28 JunSlack channel graph: edges by function pair15 JulResponse latency by function pair07 AugChange point confirmed at 15 Dec
The Zoe Score
Nine dimensions. One score.
Each dimension is weighted by the company’s stage and rolled into a single predictive Zoe Score, with a confidence percentage and a coverage tier so you can see how much of it rests on connected data. Where something moves, there is a finding you can act on. When nothing does, Zoe stays silent. Where the deck said one thing and the books say another, the finding says so. Every point traces back to a data pull you can open in one click to dig deeper.
The nine dimensions
- Derived from the deck and 5 target-connected systems
- 15 normalized metrics
- Confidence 84% · 82% coverage
- Patterns, not paragraphs
- Read-only, revocable
Dimension One of nineIllustrative example
Score74/ 100
Financial Vitality
Healthy
Close cadence, AR aging, invoice rhythm, burn consistency
From QuickBooks
Evidence behind it
- QuickBooks
Specific or silent · the finding behind itLearn more about the Readout Package
No open finding on this dimension. Silent is a result. Nothing crossed the evidence bar.
Walk into the IC with receipts.
The target’s claims, checked against the books. The founder’s answers, scored. Nine dimensions, weighted for stage, and inside 24 hours of the run you’re holding an IC memo written for the room and a signed opinion when confidence clears the bar.