The Graduation Standard
What every product can show before we call it delivered.
The Standard mirrors the technical due diligence questionnaire we use for investors, so every product arrives at diligence with the answers and the evidence in one place. If a product does not meet it, it is not delivered.
The Standard
Nine areas, evidenced, not described
| Area | What a graduate can show |
|---|---|
| Ownership and IP | Clean IP assignment from everyone who contributed, including the studio; code in the venture's own repository and cloud account; open source licences recorded |
| Architecture | Current architecture diagram, decision records for the significant choices, and a scaling view against the funding plan rather than only today's load |
| Security | Access control and leaver process, secrets management, dependency scanning, audit logs, and a tested backup and restore |
| Data protection | Record of processing, data processor agreements, retention and deletion rules, and the international transfer position |
| Delivery | Automated tests, a repeatable release process, and separate development and production environments |
| Operations | Monitoring and alerting, error tracking, an incident log and availability history |
| Unit economics | Cloud and AI cost per active customer, measured from real usage |
| AI use | Which models are used and why, what data they see, how outputs are checked, and what the venture owns versus what it rents |
| Product evidence | Usage analytics, customer feedback, and the metrics the funding plan depends on |
Every graduate receives this as a structured data room, not a slide.
Build to the Standard from the first day
It costs far less to build the evidence as you go than to recreate it under diligence.