Organisational Intelligence for Early-Stage Ventures

Know where you stand
before the room does.

EPIC Alliance brings structured, stage-calibrated assessment to the organisational dimensions of startup risk — the ones most correlated with failure, and assessed the least.

For investors & institutions

A standardised organisational risk signal — structured, comparable, and stage-calibrated — at every moment in the investment lifecycle where leadership risk matters.

Due diligence · Deal flow · Portfolio monitoring · Follow-on decisions

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For founders

Understand the organisational health of your venture and where it sits on the maturity curve — before investors ask. No consultant. No scheduling. Instant.

51 KPIs · 4 pillars · Stage-calibrated · Instant structured report

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51KPIs
Across 4 pillars
5stages
Stage-calibrated
20min
No consultant. No scheduling.
45%+
Non-financial failures

Financial rigor.
Organisational blindspot.

Venture capital applies rigorous quantitative models to financial risk. But when evaluating the organisational and leadership dimensions of a startup, the same investors rely almost entirely on unstructured methods — founder interviews, gut instinct, and collective impressions.

The evidence is clear: over 45% of early-stage failures are directly attributable to team dysfunction, leadership gaps, and premature scaling — not financial mismanagement. Yet these are precisely the risks that receive the least analytical rigor.

"Most founders discover their organisational gaps in the due diligence room. By then, the terms have already changed."

EPIC Compass is built to close this gap — providing a structured, comparable, and stage-calibrated scorecard before founders ever enter the room.

Risk management across
the full investment lifecycle.

EPIC Connect is the first standardised rating instrument for organisational risk in early-stage ventures — giving investors a structured signal at every moment where that risk matters.

Due Diligence
Signal where traditional due diligence is blind
Before committing capital, receive a structured organisational scorecard — 51 KPIs, stage-calibrated, comparable across opportunities. Financial models tell you where a startup is going. EPIC tells you whether the team can get it there.
45%+ of startup failures are non-financial
Deal Flow
Organisationally qualified deal flow
Access startups that have already completed an EPIC assessment. You do not just see deal flow — you see deal flow with an organisational health score attached. Evaluate a startup's leadership maturity before the first meeting.
Portfolio Monitoring
Detect risk before it appears in the numbers
Track the organisational health of your portfolio companies over time. Reassessments every quarter surface leadership drift, team dysfunction, and execution deterioration — months before they show up in financial reporting.
Follow-on Decisions
Objectify what is currently intuition
Compare a portfolio company's current EPIC score against its score at initial investment. Before committing additional capital, answer the question that gut feel cannot: has the organisation actually matured since we first invested?
EPIC Connect is the first standardised, independent, and repeatable rating instrument applied to the dimension of startup risk that has the highest failure correlation and the lowest current measurement discipline.
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This is what you get.
In 20 minutes.

A structured diagnostic — four sections, fully calibrated to your stage of maturity.

01
Global score + pillar breakdown
A composite score out of 100 with detailed scores across the four EPIC pillars — calibrated against your maturity stage.
02
5 priority gaps, ranked by impact
The organisational gaps most likely to slow your growth or hurt your raise — with a concrete action plan for each.
03
Cohort benchmark
Where you stand relative to indicative averages for your stage — across all four pillars.
04
Demonstrated strengths to leverage
The KPIs where you are already at peak performance — and how to turn them into competitive advantages.
View full sample report →
No signup. No form. Direct access.
67/100
EPIC Profile · Seed Stage
Practitioner
Structured and improving. Ready for investor scrutiny with targeted work on two gaps.
E Empower
72
P Present
58
I Innovate
71
C Commit
64
Top priority gaps
1
Present
Written Communication & Thought Leadership
32/100
2
Commit
OKR Execution Rate
41/100
3
Empower
Delegation & Trust Architecture
45/100

From assessment to action
— a full continuum.

Not a one-shot diagnostic. A platform that stays relevant across the full lifecycle of your organisation.

1
Assess
20-minute self-assessment
A structured questionnaire across 51 KPIs and 4 pillars. Self-administered, stage-calibrated. No consultant, no scheduling, no delay.
2
Understand
Instant structured report
Your EPIC score, pillar breakdown, 5 priority gaps ranked by impact — each with concrete action steps — your cohort benchmark, and demonstrated strengths to leverage.
3
Track
Measure your progress over time
Re-assess quarterly to track how your organisational maturity evolves. Each reassessment shows what improved, what stalled, and where to focus next — and soon, receive contextualised coaching recommendations directly from your EPIC score.
4
Connect
Access funding — on your terms
If you are seeking funding, choose to make your scorecard visible to investors on EPIC Connect. Optionally, work with an EPIC-certified coach on specific gaps. You control your visibility at all times.
Founder controls visibility

Your organisation's health,
made measurable.

Four pillars. 51 KPIs. Calibrated to your stage. The same analytical rigour investors would want — without a consultant, without scheduling, without delay.

Self-Assessment
20 minutes. No consultant. No scheduling.
A structured questionnaire across 51 KPIs and 4 pillars — calibrated to your stage of maturity. Self-administered and rigorous. No consultant, no scheduling, no delay.
Instant Report
Your score. Your gaps. Your action plan.
Receive your EPIC score, pillar breakdown, 5 priority gaps ranked by impact — each with concrete next steps — and a benchmark against indicative averages for your stage.
Progress Tracking
Measure growth. Quarter by quarter.
Re-assess quarterly to see how your organisation matures over time. Each cycle shows what improved, what stalled, and where to direct energy next — across the full fundraising cycle.
Fundraising Readiness
Enter the room with evidence, not hope.
When you're ready to raise, choose to share your EPIC scorecard on EPIC Connect — giving investors an organisational health signal before the first meeting. You control visibility at all times.
No consultant. No scheduling. Instant. Complete your EPIC Compass assessment and receive a full structured report — directly actionable, benchmarked against your stage cohort.
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The EPIC Model

Four dimensions that together cover the full organisational risk landscape of an early-stage venture.

Empower · Present
Innovate · Commit
E
Empower

Internal Leadership Capacity

People development, delegation, psychological health, and the organisational systems through which leadership is exercised and distributed as the company scales.

Team Development Delegation Rate Resilience Accountability Emotional Intelligence
P
Present

External Credibility & Communication

Pitch clarity, investor relations, strategic storytelling, and the organisation's capacity to attract capital, talent, partners, and customers through credible communication.

Pitch Clarity Investor Relations Trust Record Meeting Conversion Personal Branding
I
Innovate

Adaptive & Creative Capability

Intellectual depth, market signal integration, prototyping speed, and the organisation's capacity to learn and adapt faster than the competition evolves.

Product Intuition Trend Awareness Experimentation Applied Learning Creative Problem-Solving
C
Commit

Execution & Delivery Culture

OKR completion, decision quality, financial discipline, and the organisation's reliable capacity to convert strategic intent into operational result — at scale.

OKR Execution Decision Quality Financial Tracking Customer NPS Scalability Planning

Assessed against your stage,
not a universal standard

A Pre-Seed founder is not penalised for the absence of traction metrics. A Series A company is held to a higher standard. The same question — assessed correctly.

Stage 01
Pre-Seed
< €10K ARR
Ideation. 1–3 people. Personal capital. Focus: founder capacity and ambiguity tolerance.
Stage 02
Seed
€10K–€1M ARR
Early traction. 3–15 people. Angel funding. Focus: product–market fit and early team.
Stage 03
Series A
€1M–€5M ARR
Repeatable model. 15–50 people. Institutional funding. Focus: leadership team transition.
Stage 04
Series B+
€5M–€20M ARR
Scaling. 50–200 people. Multi-round. Focus: governance, systems, accountability culture.
Stage 05
Licorne
> €20M ARR
Scale. 200+ people. Full governance. Focus: institutional culture and international operations.

Three tools. One mission.

From individual assessment to collective intelligence — a shared language for organisational performance across the full investment ecosystem.

Built for the ecosystem.
By practitioners.

EPIC Alliance was founded on a single conviction: organisational risk is both measurable and systematically underassessed — and the failure to measure it has material consequences for investment outcomes.

EPIC Compass is in active deployment. The 51 KPIs were selected through rigorous filtration: empirical grounding in organisational research, relevance to investor decision-making, measurability without external audit, and discriminating power across maturity stages.

"Venture capital applies rigorous models to the dimensions of risk easiest to measure, while accepting much higher uncertainty about the dimensions that matter most."

Built by ICF-certified practitioners with deep experience at the intersection of organisational leadership and early-stage finance. The instrument is live and improving with every assessment completed.

The long-term vision: a living organisational score, continuously updated through data integrations and guided by intelligent coaching — the FICO score for founders.

Contact us

Our mission

To bring the same analytical rigor to organisational and leadership risk that investors already apply to financial risk — starting with early-stage ventures in Europe.

Framework Summary

A 4-page overview of the EPIC framework — the four pillars, stage calibration principle, and KPI selection methodology.

Full Working Paper

The complete 32-page academic working paper — empirical grounding, scoring architecture, and validation strategy. Available to qualified partners on request.

Based in Luxembourg

Built in one of Europe's most active early-stage ecosystems — with the ambition to become the reference assessment standard across European BA networks and accelerators.

Know where you stand
before the room does.

EPIC Compass takes 20 minutes. Stage-calibrated, benchmarked against your cohort, and structured for investor conversations.

Access EPIC Connect → Start EPIC Compass →