Call4Ideas
The idea is yours. We bring the rest.
For researchers, industry experts and people who have lived with a problem for years. No company needed, no deck, no need to write code. You need to know the problem better than we do.
Who
You already know the hardest thing to know
The rare part of a venture is not the code, and not the capital. It is knowing exactly where it hurts, for whom, and what it costs. You do not learn that from a market report: either you spent years inside an industry, or you did not.
Researchers
You have a result that works in the lab and no appetite for finding out alone whether anyone will pay for it. We have taken seven products out of our own research: we know where that handover breaks.
Industry experts
You watch a process every day that could stop existing. You know who signs, what it costs today, and why the current vendors do not fix it. All that is missing is whoever builds it.
Managers and operators
You ran the function, you know the real numbers and you have the contacts. What you lack is the technology side and someone willing to take the risk of building with you.
People obsessed with a problem
You have no title that entitles you, just three years spent studying something that does not add up. Sometimes that is the best profile. Convince us with the answers, not the CV.
8Gate · IPS
How we weigh an idea, before anything else
More ideas are born inside KVA than we can validate. The first filter is the Innovation Potential Score: five axes that say whether a problem is worth it, regardless of who brings it. Your proposal goes through exactly that, at the same bar as an idea born upstairs.
Everything you need to prepare is below. It is not a surprise test: if you can answer these five, the proposal almost assesses itself.
Labour mass
How many human hours sit inside the process today?
- What raises it
- Many people doing the same thing repeatedly, with numbers you can state: how many, how often, how long.
- What lowers it
- An annoying but rare problem, or one person doing it twice a month.
Innovation void
How uncovered is the problem?
- What raises it
- The people living with it cope with spreadsheets, email and patience, because no vendor really covers it.
- What lowers it
- Ten companies already solve it well. An eleventh helps nobody, however much better it is by ten per cent.
Automation leverage
How much of that work can AI genuinely take on today?
- What raises it
- Something changed recently and you can name it: a model that reads what it could not read before, data that did not exist, a rule that moved.
- What lowers it
- It would have worked five years ago too, or it needs a capability no model has today and the idea takes for granted.
Crossable barriers
What keeps competitors out, and can we get through?
- What raises it
- Real barriers that you happen to know: regulation, legacy integrations, data nobody hands over, multi-year contracts. They are why whoever gets in first stays.
- What lowers it
- No barrier at all, so anyone can copy. Or an impassable one: that ends the game.
Right to win
Why you specifically, and not anyone reading the same report?
- What raises it
- Customer access, proprietary data, years inside the industry, a research result of your own. Something you cannot buy and cannot read.
- What lowers it
- Enthusiasm, a well-made market analysis, or an insight anyone else would have had from the same sources.
Two axes are eliminating. Without real automation leverage and without a right to win of your own, the proposal does not pass, however large the problem. And a barrier nobody can cross ends it on its own: we tell you straight away rather than leaving you waiting.
Prepare before you send
Copy this prompt into ChatGPT, Claude or whatever you use, paste your idea however messy it is, and let it interrogate you. You will come out with the answers ready for the form, and you will already know where the weak point is.
You are a sceptical venture-building analyst. Your job is not to encourage me: it is to work out whether my idea holds, and to help me describe it so it can actually be assessed. I am about to propose an idea to KVA, a venture studio that builds AI-native companies. They weigh every idea on five axes: 1. LABOUR MASS — how many human hours sit inside the process today. Little work, little value to free. 2. INNOVATION VOID — how uncovered the problem is. If ten companies already solve it well, an eleventh is not needed. 3. AUTOMATION LEVERAGE — how much of that work AI can genuinely take on today, not in theory. 4. BARRIERS — what keeps competitors out, and whether they can be crossed. 5. RIGHT TO WIN — why me specifically, and not anyone else reading the same market report. This is the heaviest axis. Here is my idea, messy as it is: <<< PASTE YOUR IDEA HERE >>> Work in this order, without skipping a phase. PHASE 1 — Interrogate me. Ask me at most eight questions, one at a time, starting with the ones you cannot answer yourself from what I gave you. Prioritise labour mass, who pays, and right to win. Do not move to phase 2 until I have answered. PHASE 2 — Assess me, no discounts. For each of the five axes tell me three things: what in my idea raises it, what lowers it, and what I should go and find out to answer better. If an axis is weak, say so plainly instead of softening it. If automation leverage or right to win are weak, tell me it does not pass as it stands, and why. PHASE 3 — Draft the answers. Write a draft for each of these fields, in my words, with no pitch jargon and no promotional adjectives. Use the concrete numbers where I gave them, and write "to be verified" where I did not. - The idea in one line (max 120 characters, descriptive, not a slogan) - The process or work I want to change (who does it, how many people, how many hours, what goes wrong) - How it is solved today (even if the answer is "badly" or "it isn't") - Why now, and why with AI (what changed that was not there five years ago) - Who pays (the role that signs, not the company) - What I bring (customer access, data, years inside the industry, a research result of my own) - What makes it hard to enter (if I do not know, say so instead of inventing it) PHASE 4 — The last thing. Tell me the riskiest assumption in the whole idea, and the cheapest test that could prove it wrong.
Four possible answers, and none of them is “never again”
Potential is not the only thing we look at: whether we can move now, with the people we have free, counts too. These are the answers you can get.
We start
The problem is worth it and we are ready. A test begins, with the threshold written before we start.
We incubate
Worth it, but something is not yet in place. It goes into incubation with an expiry date, not into limbo.
A tool, not a company
Solvable quickly, but not big enough to carry a company. We often build it anyway, as a tool.
Not now
And we say so, naming the axis it stopped on. A parked idea can be woken by a new fact: we write that condition down when we park it.
The rule that keeps us honest: the score orders the queue, but only evidence moves an idea forward. No score, however high, replaces a test that passed — and the decision to move to validation is made by a person, not a model.
The trade
What we bring
We do not buy your idea. We build it with you, and the company that comes out has us inside it from day one.
The lab
AI researchers, agents and pipelines already built and already tested on seven products of our own. We paid for that research once: your venture does not pay for it again.
The people who build
A product team that has shipped software into production inside banks and insurers, not only into demos.
The first customers
We work inside corporates and enterprises as consultants. That is where an idea finds its first real buyer, before it is even a product.
Capital and structure
We fund the early phase, incorporate the company and stay with you to the next round. You remain the founder.
The path
What happens after you hit send
The path is the same one an idea born internally takes. Every step has an exit criterion written before, not decided after.
- 01
It arrives
The proposal enters our pipeline under a reference of its own. From then on it is tracked like every other.
- 02
First reading
An agent compares it against what we already know about the industry and proposes a score on the nine axes, with the sources it consulted.
- 03
A human decides
The score does not decide: it opens the discussion. A person on the team looks at it, and you get an answer either way, including when it is a no.
- 04
Validation
If we start, we start from a cheap test that could prove us wrong, with the threshold and the kill criterion written before we begin.
- 05
We build
Past validation it becomes a real project: a team, a budget, and the six-rung ladder of our venture building.
We answer everyone within 15 working days. Even when the answer is no, we tell you which axis it stopped on.
Propose
Five questions, fifteen minutes
The form is long, and that is deliberate. These are the same questions we weigh our own ideas on: if the answers are there, we can assess it properly instead of sending you a non-committal reply.
- The process you want to change, and how many people work on it today
- How it is solved now, even if the answer is “badly”
- Why it is solvable today and not five years ago
- Who signs the cheque
- What you bring that a market report does not have
What you write stays yours and ours. We do not pass it on and we do not use it to build without you.
Two front doors
Do you have a company already, or just the idea?
Two different conversations, kept apart, because mixing them wastes everyone's time.
Call4Ideas
You have a problem and an insight, not a company. We build from the start together: the company comes later, and it comes with us inside it.
Call4Ventures
You already have a company, a product and a round in progress. The pitch enters our dealflow and we assess it as an investment.
Submit your startup