Winnow the inbound lists, the conference floors and the banker introductions down to one deduplicated shortlist, log each founder claim beside its source and date, and leave acceptance to a named scout.
A company is sourced, and the thesis it was sourced against goes on the record beside it.
02
A claim is made in a pitch, and it is logged as a claim with its speaker and its day.
Reason
03
A company arrives twice, once off an accelerator list and once from a banker, and the two merge.
04
A legal name differs from the trading name, and both spellings hang off a single company record.
05
A search returns nothing, and the absence is written down as an absence rather than as weakness.
Decide
06
A company overlaps a live conversation elsewhere in the firm, and the clash goes to a human.
07
A shortlist ages, and each entry carries the day it was checked and what has gone unchecked since.
Out
08
A company raises or is acquired, and its entry is marked stale until a scout has looked again.
09
Execute write actions only inside the approval boundaries agreed during implementation.
→Product statement
Sourcing, merging and dating belong to the agent. It holds no view on valuation and recommends no investment; a named scout, never the agent, accepts a company onto the shortlist.
Example workflow
One company, channels to shortlist
AgentHuman
1Company surfacesAccelerator cohorts, conference lists, banker introductions or an unsolicited founder email
2Sourcing context assembledThe company, the legal and trading names it answers to, the thesis it was sourced against, and the day it first appeared
3Claim evidence draftedThe company, the claims made about it, the material under them and completeness
4Controls appliedDuplicate checks, name-resolution checks, freshness checks and completeness confidence
No human action required
Stages 1 to 4 run unaided, and nothing is accepted at any of them — the agent is qualifying, and a scout comes in at the completeness gate.
5DecisionSplits at the completeness gate
Evidence sufficient
Travels to the named scout, who accepts.
Anything thin
Adds a ventures analyst read first.
Ventures review
The record is held with its claims, its gaps and the channel each one arrived through.
Accept · Append evidence · Send to ventures review
Accepted — by the named scout▼
6Company and pipeline records updatedOnly where write access and records policy allow it
7Outcome evaluatedClaim provenance, duplicate resolution, analyst corrections and what review found
Corrections
Each analyst correction is counted in the evaluation.
What should not run autonomously
Human approval stays in control
Outside the boundary — human approval required8 items
Accepting a company onto the shortlist.
Deciding what a company is worth.
Calling an unverified claim confirmed.
Ranking one thesis above another.
Automation boundaryAgent acts unaided
✓Merge duplicate arrivals into one company record under both names.
✓Log every founder claim with the material behind it.
✓Note the thesis each sourced company answers, in the record itself.
✓Raise an overlap with a live conversation to its owner.
No company joins a shortlist except by a named scout, inside the agreed boundaries.
Judging whether a company is investable.
Telling a founder the process has ended.
Setting the thesis the team scouts to.
Changes to the shortlist or the thesis register.
Example output
One founder claim, annotated
Our partnership development agent takes over the moment a commercial relationship comes into view, with ownership, screening and commission rationale; this page stops at sourcing and qualification.
Sourcing record · single companyIllustrative example
Claim
Recorded as
Company
Evidence of record
Confidence
Held for
Traction stated in the pitch deck
Said by the founder, unverified and unmeasured
Growth claim
Pitch deck, 3 August 2026
Held unaccepted
The ventures scout, by name
As receivedLifted from the deck and the founder call, and it carries only as much weight as they do.
What the record holdsPitch deckFounder call noteAccelerator listing
Why no claim is confirmed hereWhether this claim holds up is a matter for measurement, not for a model.
ActionAcceptAppend evidenceSend to ventures review
What the score decidesBelow the configured threshold a record picks up a ventures read before the scout sees it.
Value
Where AI adds value
The same four claims, placed at the point in the workflow where each one applies.
Where the value landsValue 01 – 04
Every companyFrom the channel that carried it
03Evidence
Where the evidence is used
This is a corporate ventures and strategy tool, not an investment process: the agent holds no view on valuation, makes no investment recommendation and puts no company in rank order.
01Approved path
A pitch is not diligence
What a founder says arrives as a claim, and the agent keeps it as one — with whoever said it and the day it was said.
02Human review
What was checked, and not found
Coverage thins sharply at the earliest stages. For a good many sourced companies no register entry, no funding note and no press mention could be retrieved, and each blank is written down as thin coverage rather than as a mark against the company.
04Build an evidence trail
The company, the claim it made and the scout who logged it stay on the record.
Integrations
Typical integrations
Five system groups connect to the same agent. Which of them are in scope is decided in discovery.
Deal-flow channelsAccelerators · conferences · inbound Cohort lists and introductions
Company and register dataCompany registers · trading names Legal names and incorporation entries
Thesis and pipelineVentures CRM · thesis register Sourcing rationale and stage
Agent
Startup scouting evidence
Reads the channels Merges the record Holds for the scout
Founder and adviser materialDecks · call notes · investor updates Founder claims and their dates
A thesis-level verification figure can read clean while unsolicited founder email carries most of the rework. Nestack reports the correction rate by sourcing channel, not only in total.
Slice performance — reported separately, not only in aggregateIllustrative example
Slice
Failure rate
Lift
Lift vs. threshold
Status
Unsolicited founder email
6.5%
3.6×
Review
Conference and event lists
4.6%
2.6×
Review
Accelerator cohort lists
2.8%
1.6×
Watch
Banker and adviser introductions
1.5%
0.8×
Normal
Bar: correction-rate lift vs. banker introduction baseline · scale 0–4.0× · tick marks the 2.0× review threshold2 of 4 slices over threshold
Evidence-linked improvement
What an unmeasured claim costs
A cycle ends when the unverified founder claim is a standing case. That suite is what the next shortlist issued is measured against.
Improvement cycle · five stagesSwitchback — the path turns at Improve and returns at Learn
01Detect
Correction rate rises on unsolicited founder email.
02Diagnose
The traction number in the deck that the company had never actually measured is read back until one cause remains.
03Improve
Changes leave numbered, and the companies that forced them travel attached.
04Verify
One company case still failing is enough to stop the whole release.
05Learn
The case is kept, and the scouting rules are rewritten alongside it.
Learn → DetectThe return edge. The next company is measured against a suite one case longer.
Typical build scope
Twelve workstreams across six weeks
The build scope read against the delivery timeline. Week structure follows the six-week plan — discovery, sources, shortlist assembly, evaluation, integration, then production validation and handover.
WorkstreamWeek 1Week 2Week 3Week 4Week 5Week 6
01Thesis-capture and acceptance-boundary discovery.
02Channel, register and founder sources.
03Claim-to-source and duplicate-resolution mapping.
04Sourced-company ingestion.
05Company, claim and thesis binding.
06Completeness scoring and review routing.
07Scout acceptance workflow.
08CRM and channel integration.
09Verification and duplication cases.
10Guardrails and shortlist controls.
11Company-trail instrumentation.
12Deployment, documentation and Agent Care handover.
12 workstreams · 6 weeks · bar shows the weeks a workstream is active — several run in parallelFinal scope and sequence confirmed in discovery
Engagement tiers
What each tier includes
Rows are the capabilities named in each tier's scope. Higher tiers include everything below them.
Capability✓ in scope · — not at this tierPilotOne thesis, one yearProductionProduction scouting workflowAdvancedMultiple theses / regions
Introduced at Pilot
Record assembly to your thesis✓✓✓
Named scout release✓✓✓
Sourced-company baseline✓✓✓
Introduced at Production
Reporting by thesis—✓✓
Scout sign-off workflow in your systems—✓✓
Approved write-back—✓✓
Deal-flow-source integration—✓✓
Introduced at Advanced
Multi-region sourcing——✓
Cross-thesis evidence packs——✓
Large company estates——✓
Multi-channel deduplication controls——✓
Build priceFrom $5,000From $8,000Custom quote
Final build priceConfirmed after discovery based on integrations, workflow complexity, company volume, approval controls and deployment requirements.
Separate from buildBuild pricing is separate from recurring Agent Care, which covers managed monitoring, evaluations, incidents and verified improvements after launch.
What we need from you
What you bring, and what we build with it
Each input maps to a piece of build scope and a week in the delivery timeline.
You bringWe build with it
01Your live theses and the scouts who own them→Thesis mapping and channel captureWeek 1
02Representative decks, cohort lists and call notes→Claim binding, duplicate logic and the sourcing baselineWeek 2
03Your standing scouting procedure and the scouts it names→Thesis mapping, claim binding and the automation boundaryWeek 1
04Access to relevant APIs, feeds or exports→Channel, register and founder source assessment, then integration setupWeek 2
05Shortlists you would not want revisited→Verification cases and the evaluation roundWeek 4
06What no scouting note may guarantee→Completeness scoring, review routing, guardrails and release controlsWeek 3
07A named scout who accepts onto the shortlist→Handover to the named scout, then pilot and production validationWeeks 5–6
Nothing else is requiredDeployment, documentation and Agent Care handover are ours.
Delivery timeline
Four phases across six weeks
None of this is rounded for neatness; the fifth band shows two phases because that is how they run.
PhaseW1W2W3W4W5W6
DiscoveryW1
BuildW2 – W3
EvaluateW4 – W5
Pilot & LaunchW5 – W6
Week focusW1Scouting workflow discovery, thesis mapping and the automation boundaryW2Source integration and the sourced-company baselineW3Record assembly, duplicate logic and release controlsW4Evaluation suite, verification cases and failure-mode testingW5Channel integration, pilot shortlists and targeted correctionsW6One scouting year run under the ventures lead, then Agent Care handover
Reading the bandEvery bar is the width its own work earns, and week five doubles up because two phases sit inside it.
At the end of W6When the company record validates, Agent Care picks the agent up.
DurationSix-week plan shown · typical delivery 4–6 weeks depending on scope confirmed in discovery.
Next step · Strategy AI agent
Build a startup scouting agent around the traction number nobody ever measured.
Show us one company and the claim you took it forward on. Not a valuation, not a recommendation — a dated note of where the company came from, which thesis it answers, what the founder said, and what could not be found at all.
