An AI superagent named Boardy introduced me to superwhiz named Eric Li.
If you haven't met Boardy yet, it's an AI networking agent. It calls you, learns what you're working on and who you're trying to reach, and then makes warm introductions to people you actually should know. And it does it all with a sick Aussie accent. I've come to look forward to these calls, because lately the best part of my week is sitting across a table, or a Zoom, from an entrepreneur I wouldn’t have otherwise met and exploring how we can find some novel to do together.
Eric Li was one of those intros, and about ninety seconds in, I could tell this one was different.
Eric Li at UPenn
You should know first off that Eric isn't an AI engineer who wandered into venture. He’s an AI-native developer who has spent real time on both sides of the table. He helped take an AI startup to 6,000 monthly users and into serious accelerator programs. He scouted deals for California VC funds. And he founded Altus Strategies, Penn's first student-run venture studio. So when he set out to build a tool that judges pitch decks, he wasn't just guessing what investors think. He had been the one thinking it.
That tool is Verdict, and it solves a problem every founder has felt and almost none can fix on their own: it’s nearly impossible to get honest, detailed feedback from a high-level VC on your deck.
Think about it. Investors glance for thirty seconds and ghost you. Your friends say it looks great. And the one thing you'd ask for a gut check, a normal AI chatbot, is the worst offender of all, because it's built to flatter you and hand back the answer you want to hear. Eric spent many an hour writing real investment memos, and he watched founders fly blind for lack of a single honest read.
Verdict is built to that read. You upload your deck, and it writes you the brutally honest investment memo a real VC would write if a real VC had two hours and zero incentive to be polite. In Eric's own framing: a chatbot is trying to hand you an answer you'll like. Verdict is looking for the thing that kills the deal.
Eric has published up a few sample memos based on public decks, including one from Theranos. If only those investors had Verdict about a decade ago.
If only VCs who invested in Theranos had Verdict …
It doesn't spit out a score and leave. It grades you on the things investors actually underwrite: unicorn opportunity, team velocity, capital efficiency, and moat durability. It flags your soft spots and tells you exactly why they're soft. Every claim it makes is tied to a real third-party citation, so it can't invent a number to make you feel better. It even catches what a rushed human reviewer would miss. Run the old Theranos deck through it and it flags the science and revenue that doesn't add up. That's the whole point.
And it knows who's reading. If you're a founder, Verdict is a coach: here's what's wrong, here's how to fix it, here's your progress across deck versions, here's a 90-day roadmap and the exact questions this investor is going to hit you with. If you're an investor, it's an analyst: investability signals, risk flags, and the manual diligence you'd rather not be doing at 11 p.m. But Verdict doesn’t ask you to take its own word for it — it’ll link you to the specific piece of evidence it used to generate its findings for your own due diligence.
The rest of the Therapnos memo … a lot of “F’s” and red flags 🚩
That's the part that got me. Plenty of student startups build a clever demo. Eric built something more advanced than tools I've seen out of funded companies, because he has actually lived the workflow he's automating. Early cohorts have already run on it, and he is just getting started.
Which brings me to the name. Verdict. Because that is the one thing founders almost never get. Everyone gives you a reaction. Nobody gives you a ruling. Verdict hands you the honest one before the person who matters does. "Know the company before the first call," as Eric puts it, whether the company is someone else's or your own.
Boardy made the connection so I could tell you about Verdict, and both were built by people obsessed with helping other people build. That is exactly the ecosystem I want to live in. And the student founders I keep meeting, Eric among them, are the ones building it.
So here's the ask, and it's an easy one: if you have a deck, run it through Verdict before your next investor conversation. Don't walk into that room having only heard "looks great" from people who love you. Hear the verdict first, while you can still do something about it.
And I got you a code. Founders can start a free trial right here:
That's what good partners are for.
— Kevin "Coach" Carter
Learn more at useverdict.io, start your free trial at useverdict.io/p/coach-carter, and if you'd like an AI to make your next great human introduction, meet Boardy.