Cristelle Bretnacher and Lindsey Braik (EPIC Alliance) on turning team dynamics into measurable data, why organisational risk deserves the same rigor as financial risk, and what’s next for founders and investors.
What’s the everyday headache EPIC Alliance is meant to fix for founders and investors?
A founder can send an investor a cap table, a P&L, a runway. Ask about the team and everyone switches to stories. There is no file to send. That is the hole in the ecosystem: the money side has data, the human side has impressions. Founders lose deals over something they were never able to show. Investors sign, or pass, on a feeling they cannot document. At EPIC Alliance We turn that side into data you can export.
Why does organisational risk deserve the same rigor as financial risk in startup assessment?
Because that is where early-stage money is lost. Over 45% of failures trace back to team dysfunction, leadership gaps and scaling too early, not to bad financials. An investor will model burn, runway and unit economics to two decimals, then judge the founding team on three meetings and a gut feeling. Not because they don’t care. Because there was nothing to measure it with. So we built it: 51 indicators, four pillars, calibrated to five funding stages, based on around 4,000 startup post-mortems. The same rigor, on the part everyone calls decisive and nobody counts.
Who are you building this for next?
Most of it is already live. Founders take the assessment and work with a coach AI that runs on their own results, anchored in the research the model is built on. Investors have their own access, with a marketplace where a founder who is raising can show their EPIC scorecard, and an analyst AI to help them read what is behind the numbers. Incubators and board members can follow their startups over time, always with the startup’s agreement. What comes next is the dataset: enough startups measured for a founder or an investor to compare a score against the cohort, stage by stage. A score means little on its own. It means a lot next to a hundred others at the same stage.
What can founders expect from the September 10 session at the LHoFT?
No pitch, no demo. Bring a laptop. Forty minutes, 51 indicators, and you leave with your score. We are both in the room: we present EPIC, explain the method, walk you through your results and help you turn them into next steps. Your results remain confidential. It is also where the EPIC Circle starts, a community of like-minded ecosystem stakeholders. LHoFT, 10 September, 10:00 to 12:00, limited seats, registration on Luma.
