MidMarketBench

Methodology v0.3

Judgement carries the most weight.

MidMarketBench tests applied investment judgement against realistic synthetic diligence packets. Overall is derived from eight dimension scores, never stored directly.

Dimensions and weights

DimensionWeightDefinitionHigh scoreLow score
Grounding15%Claims are supported by packet evidence or clearly marked as inference.Specific evidence, disciplined attribution and no invented facts.Generic claims, hallucinated facts or management language repeated as truth.
Commercial judgementHeaviest20%Identifies what matters economically and strategically to the deal.Prioritises revenue quality, durability and decision impact.Treats all issues equally and misses the business model's economic engine.
Scepticism15%Challenges weak claims, inflated metrics and convenient narratives.Tests TAM, retention, ARR definitions and internal contradictions.Accepts the CIM framing and assumes favourable interpretations.
Numerical sanity15%Interprets and reconciles financial and operating data correctly.Connects cohorts, concentration, ARR bridges and revenue mix.Confuses metrics, ignores tables or makes arithmetic errors.
Risk discovery15%Finds hidden and second-order risks across the packet.Connects evidence across files and ranks risks by severity.Lists generic risks and misses disguised business model weakness.
Question generation10%Asks the next questions most likely to change the recommendation.Specific, answerable, prioritised and disconfirmatory questions.Long, generic diligence checklists with no decision hierarchy.
European context5%Accounts for fragmented markets, regulation, language and procurement.Avoids US category assumptions and tests country-level repeatability.Treats Europe as one market and overstates reachable scale.
Output usefulness5%Produces material a deal team can reuse with limited editing.Concise, structured, memo-ready and explicit about next actions.Verbose, generic and operationally difficult to reuse.

Scoring reference

Five-point rubric

Dimension judgements map to a common anchored scale before aggregation.

5ExcellentIdentifies the issue, supports it, explains decision impact and proposes the right diligence action.
4GoodIdentifies and explains the issue but misses some nuance or evidence.
3AcceptablePartially identifies the issue but treats it generically or weakly prioritises it.
2WeakGestures at the issue without understanding its commercial significance.
1PoorMisses the issue or reaches the opposite conclusion.

Run protocol

Closed-book first.

Closed-book

Packet only. Default for v0.3 and the cleanest test of synthesis and judgement.

Web-enabled

Public research allowed. Tests source selection, market mapping and competitive discovery.

Agentic

File inspection, search and calculation tools enabled. Tests end-to-end workflow execution.

Human-in-the-loop

The model may request missing evidence. Tests diligence process quality and question prioritisation.

Scoring operation

Hybrid, traceable evaluation.

Deterministic checks should cover arithmetic, schema validity and answer-key issue coverage. Blind model judging covers subjective dimensions, calibrated against human investment professionals.

Public and private

Cases in public. Holdouts in reserve.

Public cases explain the method. Private variants reduce overfitting and should never be shipped to the browser or public repository.