Inspiration
The best time to understand a founder isn’t when their pitch deck lands in your inbox. It’s while they’re building.
We wanted to help investors follow that journey: the early prototype, the product launch, the change in direction, and the first signs of customer interest. Those moments can provide context that a static company profile cannot.
Our starting question was simple: What if the research that helped you discover a founder also helped you prepare for your first meeting?
That became Before the Round.
What it does
Before the Round connects founder discovery and first-pass diligence in one investor workspace.
An investor defines their investment thesis, explores founder profiles, follows promising builders, and reviews a timeline of their progress. As company information and documents are added, that context supports a meeting brief: why a conversation may be worthwhile, what remains unknown, which claims need clarification, and what to ask next.
Our guiding idea is continuity. Sourcing research should become a diligence head start—not something an investor has to reconstruct when the deck arrives.
The current prototype demonstrates this journey with clearly labeled synthetic founder profiles and evidence. It includes editable investment theses, persistent following, founder timelines, evidence inspection, document-text input, and meeting briefs with questions, gaps, and next steps.
How we built it
We built the application in Ninoo Builder, with a React/TypeScript frontend and a Python/FastAPI backend.
We implemented a server-side Nicrron integration for brief generation and a Solari adapter for retrieving public-page evidence. Credentials remain server-side, and the interface distinguishes synthetic evidence, sample outputs, and integration status.
At submission, the application passes lint, production-build, and Python-compilation checks. Verification of external calls in the published environment remains pending.
Challenges we ran into
The hardest challenge was separating a compelling interface from a trustworthy evidence workflow.
During implementation, we discovered that imported search results were fixtures rather than a live sourcing pipeline. Instead of presenting them as verified discoveries, we made the demo’s synthetic nature explicit and focused on the connected investor journey.
We also encountered a deployment boundary: credentials saved in the platform were not available to the local preview backend. That reinforced an important distinction—implemented code, configured credentials, and a successfully tested integration are three different milestones.
Accomplishments we’re proud of
We created a coherent path from discovering a founder to preparing for a meeting, while keeping evidence and uncertainty visible.
Our sample diligence workflow illustrates the difference between finding an inconsistency and making an accusation. A revenue definition may need clarification. A runway calculation may depend on unstated assumptions. Customer adoption may have begun in private pilots before a public launch.
The goal is not to manufacture red flags. It is to help an investor ask better questions.
What we learned
A useful investment tool should not hide uncertainty behind a founder score.
It should explain why someone fits an investor’s thesis, what progress is observable, which information is missing, and what evidence supports the next action. We also learned that connecting discovery and diligence only creates value if the earlier context actually informs the later questions.
What’s next
Our next priorities are to verify the deployed Nicrron and Solari workflows, replace curated discovery with permitted live data sources, and add source-attributed company enrichment.
From there, we want to develop explainable engagement alerts, collaborative research handoffs, and evaluations that catch unsupported conclusions before they reach the investor.
The vision is straightforward: help investors understand the work before they enter the room.
Ride with them before you sit with them.
Built With
- ninoo
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