The short answer
The risk × upside verdict is MarketPrior’s one-line conclusion on a company: a risk score and an upside score computed from different evidence, fused into one of four verdicts — strong and clean, promising but risky, clean but quiet, or avoid.
At a glance
- Term
- Risk × upside verdict
- Also known as
- fused scorecard · diligence verdict
- Category
- Method & analysis
- Where it matters
- Company and founder due diligence
Risk × upside verdict in practice
Risk and upside are scored separately because they are different questions: a company can be both exciting and dangerous. Fusing them into quadrants keeps both visible.
Why risk × upside verdict matters
- A first-pass decision in seconds, with the drivers listed.
- A consistent way to compare companies across a pipeline or portfolio.
Risk × upside verdict in MarketPrior
Deterministic scorers turn the cited records into the two scores, and a transparent gate fuses them. A language model never decides the verdict; it only writes the memo prose, and the verdict in the memo is copied from the scorecard. “AVOID — SANCTIONED” appears only when a sanctions hit matches on an identifier, and a report with missing inputs is marked partial.