Heptalysis
Heptalysis scores a venture across seven weighted factors - market opportunity, product/solution, execution plan, financial engine, human capital, potential return and margin of safety - so an investor or founder can compare very different opportunities on one number instead of gut feel.
Picture seven spokes fanning out from a centre point, each one carrying its own weighted score.
Reach for this when…
- You are choosing between several ventures or product bets and gut feel keeps changing.
- An investor pitch feels exciting but you cannot say why on paper.
- You need a repeatable way to screen deals so decisions do not depend on who pitches best.
How to run it
- List the seven factors: market opportunity, product/solution, execution plan, financial engine, human capital, potential return, margin of safety.
- Score each factor for the venture, typically 1 to 10.
- Weight each factor by how much it matters for this type of deal.
- Multiply and sum to get one comparable score.
- Use the score to open the debate about weak factors, not to replace it.
A worked example
Situation. Liam Fraser, an angel investor in Halifax, Canada, was deciding between three seed-stage logistics startups pitching him in the same week.
Applied. He ran each through the seven factors and found the one he liked best on gut feel scored lowest on human capital and margin of safety once he weighted honestly.
Result. He backed the less flashy pitch instead. It had a thinner story but a stronger team and a real fallback if the market was slower than hoped.
The catch
The weights and scores are still subjective judgement calls dressed up as a number - two investors scoring the same deal can land far apart. It also can't rescue a genuinely weak market with a strong score elsewhere; a great team in a dead market is still a dead market. Use it to structure the debate, not to outsource the decision.
A high total score with one factor near zero is not a good deal - it's a good deal with a fatal flaw you've just averaged away.