Frequently Asked Questions

TrancheBook is a B2B research and analysis platform for institutional capital allocators — family offices, multi-family offices, RIAs serving UHNW clients, fund-of-funds, and PE professionals. The two core products are: (1) the IC Memo Pipeline, which produces complete IC packages on target companies on demand; and (2) the AI Company Ranking, a continuously-updated ranking of ~3,000 US private AI companies scored on six structural criteria plus a momentum overlay. TrancheBook is a financial publisher and research platform — not a broker-dealer.

No. TrancheBook is structured as a financial publisher and research platform. We produce and distribute research; we do not transact securities, hold client funds, or operate as an investment adviser. Indications of interest submitted on the platform are routed to our registered broker-dealer partner, Rainmaker Securities, on a flat-fee basis. Subsequent transaction communications come from Rainmaker, not from TrancheBook.

The ranking engine has no knowledge of which IOIs have been submitted, of broker fee economics, or of any post-IOI deal economics. Rankings are computed deterministically from six structural criteria and the momentum overlay only. This is a code-level and architectural prohibition — separate code paths, separate data stores, separate read permissions. The prohibition is published in plain language on the methodology page.

TrancheBook is restricted to accredited investors and institutional allocators. The public top-10 ranking is ungated. The full ranking table and per-company profiles require email and accredited-investor attestation. IC memo requests and IOI routing require a paid Research Tier subscription. Platform access is not open self-signup at launch — the request-access flow collects your institutional context and a human reviews and approves.

You submit a request-access form describing your institutional context. The platform collects the AI verification information. A human reviews and approves. Once approved, you receive access to the email-gated free tier. Paid subscriptions involve a further review of institutional context before provisioning.

All users complete identity verification through accredited KYC providers, with screening for PEP (Politically Exposed Persons), sanctions, and adverse media. Ongoing monitoring and periodic re-screening apply. Accredited-investor reattestation runs on a scheduled cycle. All eligibility decisions are logged in the immutable audit ledger.

Six deliverables: (1) investment memo (.docx, ~15–25 pages); (2) live financial model (.xlsx with Sources/Uses, LBO Returns, Monte Carlo, Value Creation Bridge, Sensitivity tables); (3) executive summary (.docx, ~2 pages); (4) management Q&A (.docx); (5) pitch deck (.pptx); (6) structured one-pager. All six reference the same canonical FinancialScenario object — IRR, MOIC, entry multiple, comp set — ensuring consistency across files.

Before the pipeline begins any work, a deterministic kill-gate check evaluates whether the deal fits the investment style. An LBO request on a $300B systemically important bank will be rejected — and the reasoning is logged and returned to you. Kill gates protect your time and signal that the system is doing real reasoning, not blindly producing output.

Typical turnaround is a few hours. Memos requiring deeper EDGAR work or complex cap-table reconstruction may take longer. A live status page shows the memo moving through pipeline stages in real time: RESEARCH → MODEL → COMPOSE → VALIDATE → DELIVER. You receive a notification when the memo is ready.

Every memo passes through an adversarial self-critic before delivery, and is then graded by a separate evaluator against a public rubric. The rubric grade and the grader's rationale ship alongside the deliverables. Memos that fail the rubric are rerun or escalated to a human — you never receive an ungraded output.

Yes. Every delivered memo has a comment surface. Highlight a passage and write a question or disagreement. The response (with revised analysis or additional sourcing) is added to the thread. Comments where analysis is revised produce a new memo version with explicit changelog. The thread is part of your permanent record.

EDGAR, Crunchbase Enterprise, Revelio Labs (team and hiring data), ATS feeds, GitHub, HuggingFace, GDELT, and USPTO (when licensing is in place). Every claim in every memo is hyperlinked to its original source in the Sources tab. TrancheBook has a constitutional prohibition on LinkedIn-sourced data — team information draws exclusively from Revelio Labs and ATS feeds.

Each company is scored on six structural criteria: (1) time since last financing, (2) presence of top-decile VC investors, (3) serial-founder status, (4) senior management technical credentials, (5) senior management commercial credentials, (6) partner-level VC attribution. The momentum overlay is a multiplier (capped at 2.0×) drawn from GitHub activity velocity, HuggingFace model releases, benchmark performance, compute infrastructure contracts, and public hiring velocity via ATS feeds. Final score = base × momentum, 90-day rolling state with 60-day exponential decay.

After email verification and accredited-investor attestation (no payment required), you receive: the full ranking table for ~3,000 companies with filtering and sorting; per-company profiles with full scoring breakdown, momentum detail, and source citations; heatmap and trend visualisations; the IOI submission form on company profiles (routing to the broker requires a paid tier); and a weekly email digest of rank changes, new entrants, and sector commentary.

The ungated public top-10 shows each company's name, one-line description, stage, last financing date, current rank, score, momentum direction (rising / falling / stable), and a "view full profile (free with email)" CTA. It is refreshed daily and is the SEO anchor and lead-capture surface.

Daily. Anomaly detection fires if a company's score moves by more than 20% in a day — the watcher determines whether this is real news or a data ingestion bug.

An Indication of Interest is a non-binding signal that you want to engage on a particular company. You submit it from the company's profile page — we capture indicated investment size, preferred deal type (primary, secondary, structured), urgency, key terms preferences, accredited-investor reattestation, and a free-text field. You can also toggle whether to attach any IC memo you have had produced on the company.

No. An IOI is explicitly non-binding on both sides until a definitive agreement is signed. Either side can withdraw at any time before terms are agreed. Submitting an IOI does not commit you to a transaction.

TrancheBook validates accreditation, packages the diligence, and forwards the IOI to Rainmaker Securities (our registered broker-dealer partner) via a structured handoff. The platform does not directly transact securities. Subsequent communications come from Rainmaker. TrancheBook monitors for broker response and escalates if an agreed SLA is missed. Status moves through: submitted → acknowledged → counterparty engaged → closed.

Never. The ranking engine is architecturally walled off from IOI and broker economics. They run on separate code paths, separate data stores, and separate read permissions. This is a constitutional and code-level prohibition, published on the methodology page.

The watchlist lets paying customers track companies without committing to action. From any company profile you can add it to your watchlist. You toggle three classes of alerts per item: rank-delta alerts (score or rank changes beyond a threshold), momentum alerts (momentum direction changes), and document alerts (new research material or memo updates). Items can be removed at any time, and alert toggles can be flipped without losing the row.

Free (email-gated): full ranking table, company profiles, IOI submission form. Research Tier (flat monthly subscription): IC memo pipeline + full ranking access + IOI routing + calibration data + watchlist with alerts + API access at the tier cap. Enterprise Tier (annual contract, tailored): white-label, custom data feeds, on-call memo turnaround, dedicated account management, larger API limits. Add-ons: higher API rate limits; real-time momentum signals (raw event stream before daily aggregation).

Yes — for paid tiers. Research Tier is a flat monthly subscription. Enterprise Tier is an annual contract. The free email-gated tier has no payment requirement. Specific pricing is provided on application.

Unlimited IC memo requests up to your monthly cap (overage priced per additional memo beyond the cap); full ranking access with no periodic re-attestation requirements; priority routing to a human analyst; IOI routing to Rainmaker Securities included for unlimited IOIs; calibration data on past memos alongside live memos; custom watchlist with delta alerts; API access at the Research Tier usage cap.

Yes. TrancheBook uses encryption at rest and in transit, role-based access controls, and logical separation of PII from research and ranking data. All PII access and modifications are logged in the immutable audit ledger. We comply with GDPR and CCPA. See the Security page for full details.

No. TrancheBook will never ask for your password, private keys, or login credentials via email or phone. All legitimate communications come from @tranchebook.com addresses. If you receive a suspicious request, report it to security@tranchebook.com.