The Zoe Score · five things to know
What the Zoe Score is, and isn’t.
A single number on a company’s operating health asks for your trust. Here is what this one is built from, how to check it, and where it stops, so you can decide how much weight it gets at IC.
Zoe Score
6464 out of 100
Attention
15 normalized metrics · confidence 84% · dated pulls
Five things to know
Why believe the number?
Because you can take it apart, and it tells you where it stops.
- 01
It is built from the company’s own records.
With the company’s consent, Zoe reads the systems it already runs, along with the data-room files added to the diagnostic, and measures what teams do, not what they say. No survey. The deck’s claims are then set against those records, line by line, in the Claim Ledger.
- 02
Every point traces back to a dated source.
The score sits on a chain you can follow down: from the composite to each dimension, from each dimension to its normalized metrics, and from each metric to the source and the date it was pulled. The evidence appendix in the Deal Package lays out every finding’s trail, source by source and date by date.
- 03
It is weighted for the company’s stage.
A Series A/B company and a PE company do not fail the same way, so their dimensions do not weigh the same. Financial Vitality and Delivery & Execution count for more in a PE company; Culture & People and C-Suite count for more at Series A/B. The set of dimensions never changes, only the weights do.
- 04
It tells you what it could not see.
Confidence and coverage travel with every score. Confidence says how much of the evidence Zoe can score at the company’s stage was present: it measures the evidence, not the accuracy. A dimension with no scored reading says Not scored and is left out of the number, so gaps are shown, not smoothed. Not every dimension can be scored today: in the example, Market & Competition and Vision & Strategy read Not scored, and the 64 is built from the 7 dimensions that were scored.
- 05
It is a measurement, not a verdict.
The verdict is the signed opinion in the Deal Package, issued only when confidence clears the bar. The score is not a quality-of-earnings opinion or a guarantee, and it does not rank the company against peers: the bands are fixed cut-offs, not percentiles. No study has yet tested the score against how deals turned out, so Zoe makes no accuracy claim for it.
How to read it
Three bands, fixed cut-offs.
A band is not the verdict. It names how seriously to take the number, and the word always travels with the color.
- 78 – 100
Healthy
Behaving like a company of its size and stage should. Nothing to raise at IC.
- 55 – 77
Attention
A named, dated pattern worth a diligence question. Not a reason to walk.
- Below 55
Critical
Thesis-breaking if it holds. Read the evidence trail before the IC, not after.
Check the number yourself.
Request the Sample Deal Package on Project Cephei and follow the 64 down through the score card, the findings and the evidence appendix. The IC memo and the signed opinion come with it.