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What has to be true for this deal to work?

Strata establishes what must be true for a company to succeed in its sector, tests the evidence against it, and highlights what to investigate next. Upload materials and receive an assessment you can challenge.

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Strata · Assessment
  1. Drop
  2. Classify
  3. Route
  4. Assess
  5. Test
  6. Verdict
Voltaic Grid
Energy & climate · Grid software · Series A · United States
Verdict
Advance to diligence
What has to be true
  • Utilities buy on a cycle the company can surviveVerified
  • Pilot performance converts to contracted revenueEvidenced
  • Interconnection timelines hold at the plan's assumptionsStated
  • Gross margin survives utility payment termsNot addressed
Investigate next: payment terms, interconnection queue position
Test the thesis →
Illustrative example: fictional company
  1. 01 Drop
    Upload a pitch deck, CIM, or materials from a data room.
  2. 02 Classify
    Strata structures the data, runs an evidence audit, and maps inputs to schema.
  3. 03 Route
    Multi-agent pipeline ensures right rubric, evidence required, and analytic treatment.
  4. 04 Assess
    Five commercial due diligence dimensions: market, moat, people, product, resilience.
  5. 05 TEST
    Claims tested against failure modes specific to the sector.
  6. 06 Verdict
    Strata takes a view on whether to spend more time on the deal and why.
  7. 07 Challenge
    Interact with and challenge the verdict. Reweight, apply your view, watch it move.

For investors making decisions with limited time and imperfect information.

A consistent and structured way to evaluate opportunities.

A common standard across different teams, mandates and deal types.

Asset managers

Assess your deal flow, focus diligence where the evidence is thin, and bring one standard to every IC memo.

  • Private equity
  • Venture capital
  • Growth equity
  • Crossover funds

Asset owners

Analyze direct and co-investment opportunities with the rigor of a dedicated deal team.

  • Pensions
  • Endowments and foundations
  • Sovereign wealth funds
  • Family offices

Corporates

Evaluate acquisition, investment, and partnership targets against strategic fit and financial return.

  • M&A and corporate development
  • Corporate venture capital
  • Strategy

Strata tests a deal's thesis throughout the investment process.

Early on, Strata tells you whether a deal is worth your time and what you might be missing. In diligence, it reveals the key risks and remaining gaps that still need investigating.

The human elements and decisions stay with you.

01
Sourcing
YOU
Network and originate.
02
Screening
The first look
Should we spend time on this?
A verdict on the materials as sent, with the reasons. Every deal that comes in, not only the few that catch a partner’s eye.
03
Initial assessment
The thesis test
What must be true? How much does the evidence show?
The conditions, each graded, and the questions to take into due diligence.
Go / no-go
04
Term sheet and DD plan
YOU
Price, structure, terms, timing.
05
Detailed diligence
The thesis test, re-run
Testing the conditions as new evidence lands.
What diligence settled, what it did not, and a sharper scope for your advisors.
The technology call
Does it work? Is it wanted? Can it reach a market? Do the economics work?
In development.
Final approval
06
Close
YOU
Close the deal.

AI made analysis cheap.
It didn’t make it consistent.

Every analyst on your team asks different questions of their AI models, receives different answers, and presents different conclusions to IC.

Strata holds every deal to the same written standard, and preserves the reasoning behind every decision.

Three analysts, three chats

Same deck
Analyst A
Is this a good investment?
Strong team and a large market. Worth pursuing.
Analyst B
What are the risks here?
Interconnection delays could be fatal. I would pass.
Analyst C
Summarize the financials.
Revenue is growing; margins aren’t disclosed. More information needed.
Private · unversioned · not comparable

Three runs, one standard

Same deck · Energy lens v0.6
Analyst A
Advance to diligence
VerifiedEvidencedStatedNot addressed
Their view
Standard weights
Analyst B
Conditional
VerifiedEvidencedStatedNot addressed
Their view
Interconnection risk raised
Analyst C
Advance to diligence
VerifiedEvidencedStatedNot addressed
Their view
Margin risk priced in
Versioned · reproducible · comparable
Illustrative example: fictional company

Outcomes take years, and luck can muddy whether your process is repeatable. Strata enables teams to measure and evaluate their judgments over time.

Where Strata sits.

Strata sits at the judgment layer, beside you.

It thinks through the data, information, and analysis the way an investor does: what must be true, what the evidence shows, what to investigate next.

You execute your thesis, and set price, structure, and terms from a stronger position.

Decision

You

Set the thesis. Interrogate the graded evidence, test your own assumptions and scenarios, agree or overrule. Price, structure, timing and the call are yours.
Assessment

Strata.

Establishes what must be true, grades the evidence, stress-tests the claims, runs your scenarios, names the risks, and takes a view.

Analysis

Answers the question asked, against the standard the asker brought.
General models, in-house builds

Information

Reports what the materials say, not whether it holds up to scrutiny.
Document and data-room AI

Data

The facts. Inputs to a view, not a view.
Market data platforms

Every run ends in a dossier.
Then you challenge it.

01

What has to be true

Four to six conditions for a company in this sector to succeed, each graded by the evidence in the materials.
02

The verdict

Decline, Conditional or Advance, with the reasons, based on the evidence provided.
03

What would move it

The conditions the evidence does not yet support, and what would settle each one. Your diligence plan, on day one.
04

Your challenge

Move the dimension weights, apply your own view of the key risks, and watch the verdict move. Every scenario is saved and attributed, so you can learn from your prior decisions.
Request a free assessment
Dimension weights
Reset to standard
People
Standard
Product
Standard
Market
Raised
Moat
Lowered
Resilience
Standard
Your view on the key risks
Interconnection risk: priced in
Procurement cycle: as stated
Margin: unresolved
Under your weights and views
Verdict holds: Advance to diligence
Carried by: Market, condition 2
Illustrative example: fictional company

One standard.
A lens for each sector.

Strata organizes every assessment around five dimensions of analysis: People, Product, Market, Moat, and Resilience. Each sector lens then focuses that analysis on what matters most—the evidence to seek, the assumptions to test, and the failure modes to look for.
The structure is consistent. The questions are sector-specific. Our methodology ensures that every deal receives the same analytical discipline without pretending that every sector should be analyzed the same way.

Deep tech & defense

Sub-sectors
  • Semiconductors & Compute
  • Advanced Materials & Chemistry
  • Robotics & Autonomy
  • Space & Aerospace
  • Advanced Manufacturing
  • Defense & Security

Energy & climate

Sub-sectors
  • Generation
  • Grid Infrastructure & Markets
  • Data Centers
  • Distributed Energy
  • End-Use Electrification
  • Carbon
  • Nature

Fintech & financial services

Sub-sectors
  • Payments
  • Lending & Credit
  • Insurance
  • Wealth & Capital Markets
  • Digital Assets
  • Banking & Compliance Infrastructure

Healthcare & life sciences

Sub-sectors
  • Therapeutics & Biopharma
  • Devices & Diagnostics
  • Care Delivery
  • Health IT & Digital Health
  • Research Tools & Services

Software & internet

Sub-sectors
  • AI & Machine Learning
  • Vertical Applications
  • Horizontal Applications
  • Developer & Data Infrastructure
  • Security
  • Marketplaces & Networks
  • Consumer Digital

Interested in using Strata in other sectors? Reach out to us.

Built as the tool
we needed ourselves.

Strata comes from Portico Advisers, an independent firm that has advised asset owners, asset managers, and corporates since 2016.

While building a permanent capital vehicle for a family office, we ran into a familiar problem: more companies than hours.

We needed a consistent way to decide where to spend our time—which companies warranted a closer look, what questions diligence needed to answer, and where our own judgment might be wrong.

So we codified how we analyze companies, sector by sector, and built Strata to apply that method consistently to every deal.

We also wanted to learn from our decisions.
01

Find our blind spots

Expose what we missed: the assumptions that failed, the risks we discounted, and the evidence we never sought.
02

Know where each of us has an edge

Surface the sectors, stages, and risks where individual judgment consistently proves strongest.
03

Compare our judgments over time

Revisit what we believed, and why, against what happened next.
EVERY JUDGMENT IN STRATA IS SAVED, ATTRIBUTED, AND COMPARABLE, CREATING A RECORD YOUR TEAM CAN LEARN FROM OVER TIME.

Your first assessment is free.
Start with one deal. Go from there.

See Strata on a deal of your own. Continue deal by deal, or embed Strata across your team.

Free

One assessment

Run a deal through Strata and receive the full assessment to review and share with your team.
Request a free assessment
PAY AS YOU GO

Pay per assessment

A screen takes 1 credit. Use credits when you need them, across the deals you choose. Every assessment is saved to your library, creating a record of the deals you've considered and the judgments you've made.
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Workspace

Annual

Strata, embedded in your team’s workflow.
For teams screening regularly. Run screens in a private, Portico-hosted workspace, with lenses calibrated to your mandate. Team-wide access and annual screening capacity, with no per-seat pricing.
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