A model that learns
It trains every day on a growing base of company histories to recognise the patterns that come before trouble, and the ones that come before a breakout.
Know when a company you’ve backed needs a decision, not just how it’s doing.
Carota.vc keeps every company in your portfolio in view between board meetings and raises a Case when one reaches a turning point, while the window for a decision is still open.
Carota.vc does the watching. Your team does the thinking.
Pre-seed · Building with design partners · Raising our first round
Root cause appearsMoney runs out
A bad month, a lost customer, a missed deadline.
The long-term promise is not being met. Carota.vc raises a Case while many options are open: change course, stronger team, sale, merger.
Few options: bridge, soft landing, wind-down.
After the round closes, the company goes quiet.
An investor commits capital, the round closes, and the company goes quiet. What comes back is a deck before a board meeting, written by the people being assessed, in a format that is different for every company in the portfolio.
The numbers that matter arrive late, and they arrive smoothed. A runway that was tight three months ago is a crisis today. A key account that stopped renewing in spring shows up in an annual summary.
By then the window has narrowed or closed for the choices that were open: a bridge, a pivot conversation, a new round, an early exit. A turning point you notice only in hindsight is no longer a decision. And a decision made too early is a mistake too: it reacts to noise.
How this is handled today, and what we do differently
Risk assessment systems already exist, and they work well where they were built to work: on companies whose numbers are audited, whose filings are public, and whose failures are recorded. Early-stage private companies are the opposite case: self-reported numbers, quiet failures, and little historical data to learn from.
Investors have covered that gap the way good investors always have: board seats, direct relationships with founders, and judgement built over many deals. It works, and it does not scale. Ten companies, then thirty, and the quiet ones drift out of view.
Carota is built to hold that attention steady across the whole portfolio, without replacing the judgement that goes into using it.
Continuous observation
Each company stays in view between board meetings, not only when a report is due.
A signal, not a stream
When a company reaches a turning point, Carota raises a Case with its level of importance, while the window for a decision is still open.
Light on founders
A handful of plain numbers each quarter. We call them Vitals. The interpretation is our job, not theirs.
Data carries its origin
Numbers are marked by how they were confirmed, inconsistencies surface instead of being smoothed over, and history is kept rather than overwritten.
Explainable, factor by factor
You see what drove an assessment, not just a score. The model advises. The investor decides.
Isolated by customer
Each customer’s data is kept separate and used only with the portfolio company’s consent.
Built for investors holding equity in private companies
Angel investors
A structured view of a portfolio that is otherwise tracked in a spreadsheet and a memory.
Venture funds
Comparable companies, and traceable assessments for partners and LPs.
Corporate venture teams
Visibility across investments made outside the core business.
Family offices
One view of direct stakes in private companies, alongside the rest of the family’s assets.
Accelerators & incubators
A whole cohort measured by the same yardstick.
Founders get something out of it too: a fair, structured assessment of their company in return for a few minutes of reporting a quarter, plus a record of what they lived through, kept intact for the next round.
This is about investments in private companies. Portfolios of listed securities are a different problem, and not one we work on.
Is this a problem in your portfolio?
We are talking to fund partners, angels and corporate venture teams about how they watch companies after the deal. Tell us how it works for you, or join as a design partner and shape Carota with us.