The same fee either way.
A technical verdict in ten working days for a flat €4,000 — a fee that does not change with the answer, and is waived entirely if we run late. Then — only if you commit — an embedded technical partner inside the company, protecting the cheque you just wrote.
Ten working days, €4,000 flat, hard stop — and free if we miss it. We take the technical claim apart and test the assumptions it rests on — architecture, cost to build, dependency risk, IP provenance, and whether the team as constituted can actually deliver it.
Proceed, decline, or proceed on named conditions — plus what we tested, what we couldn't resolve in the time, and what resolving it would cost. If it's a proceed, a build plan with cost, sequence and team shape. The founder gets the same document, unredacted, the same day.
Only after you've closed. We embed as technical partner — direction, architecture, build supervision, hiring the permanent engineering team, then standing down as that team stands up. Cash retainer plus equity plus milestones, paid by the company.
Commercial diligence tells you about the market. It does not tell you whether the thing at the centre of the pitch can be built by the people pitching it. That question is technical, and the people best placed to answer it are usually the people whose upside depends on the answer being yes.
The founder wants a yes. The banker wants a close. An advisor holding stock wants the round to happen. A decline pays none of them.
So we sell the decline. Fixed fee, paid whether the answer is proceed or not, with no stake in the company at the moment the verdict is written. It costs a fraction of one percent of the cheque to find out early — and eighteen months and the whole cheque to find out late.
These are contract terms, not intentions — every one of them is written into the engagement, and published.
The four provisions we won't negotiate. The Gate fee never becomes contingent and never becomes equity. The founder always receives the full deliverable. No private channel to the investor. And no partnership imposed on an unwilling founder. Everything else is negotiable — these four are the product.
Read the full term sheet →25+ years building production systems for banks, travel platforms and high-scale startups. The judgement calls are made by someone who has shipped the thing being judged, and has been wrong often enough to check.
Every claim in a diligence file is recorded as either a verified fact or an assumption — never silently merged. Each is traceable to how it was established, and the model can be asked what else breaks if any one of them turns out to be false.
Nothing enters the verdict because it sounded right. Findings pass a gate before they land, so the report distinguishes what was tested from what was merely plausible — including the assumptions we could not resolve inside the window.
On a recent engagement, four platform capability claims — the kind that sit unexamined in a deck and quietly determine whether a build is six weeks or six months — were checked against the actual source rather than accepted from expertise. Two of the four were false. Both would have surfaced after the money, as scope. That is the entire product: the assumptions get tested while testing them is still cheap.
Miss the ten days and you owe nothing. The guarantee is on delivery, which we control — never on the verdict, which stays unbought. A decline costs exactly what a proceed costs.
Terms are agreed before the Gate opens and frozen while it runs. We are never negotiating our own stake while forming the judgement that decides whether the stake exists.
A subscription is paid in full however many verdicts are proceed and however many are decline — which removes the incentive question at the portfolio level rather than managing it deal by deal. It also makes us free to ask, so we become the first call rather than the last resort.
Every provision above — the prices, the independence terms, the reporting rules, the founder protections and the four we won't negotiate — is published in full. There is no rate card behind this one.
Read the term sheet →The deal where the technology is the whole thesis and nobody around the table can test it. Ten working days and €4,000 later, you will know — and it will have cost a fraction of one percent of the cheque to find out.
Send us a dealor email delaney@zero2one.ee
Nothing formal needed. Enough to tell you within a day whether it's a Gate, a Deep Gate, or not worth your money.
Founders: if an investor has asked you to go through the Gate, you receive the complete report we write, unredacted, at the same moment they do — and you keep it whether they invest or not. The terms are published.