Day 12: Compare all three — which signal carried the read?

Three composites side by side — and the signal you almost skipped.

Yesterday

Yesterday you finished three composites. Today they line up — and the framework starts becoming yours.

Why this signal matters

Across three candidates, one signal usually pulled more diagnostic weight than the others. Identifying which one for your beat (sector, stage, geography) tells you where to spend the next 30 minutes when you only have 30 minutes.

The 5-minute exercise

1Lay out the three candidates: name, gut prediction, composite, delta.
2For each signal (1-6), note: did this signal flip a candidate's score? Up or down?
3Identify the signal that produced the biggest disagreement with your gut.
4Write one sentence: 'For my beat, the signal I should never skip is ___.'

What you’re filtering for

A named signal you've now upgraded to 'always run this first' for your beat. For dev-tools investors, it's usually dependents. For platform investors, it's usually new repo creation. For B2B SaaS, it's commit velocity.

Edge case

If the same signal flipped all three the same direction, you might just be discovering a sector-wide bias — e.g. dev-tools founders all over-index on dependents because that's their distribution channel.

Bonus

Save this list. Update it every 10 candidates. Within a quarter you'll have the personal heuristic that an 'all signals equal' framework can't give you.

Tomorrow

Tomorrow: a calibration run. We'll score one publicly-known recently-funded org and check whether the composite caught the round before it closed.

Curriculum: /challenge · Methodology: /methodology · Paper: ssrn.com/abstract=6606558