Deal room's investment criteria match scores

Overview

Dealum's AI-powered investment criteria match feature allows deal room admins to set up criteria that are important to their organization and describe in more detail what the organization is looking for in the context of each criterion. When criteria are set, Dealum's AI assistant will be able to evaluate the match between the criteria and any company application in the deal room and show a match score for each application.

These scores are calculated automatically after the company you have added and invited to your deal room accepts your invite or a company submits an application via your deal room's regular or public application link. You can also update match scores on applications any time, for example, after having redefined your criteria or after there have been significant changes in the application information. To calculate investment match scores for applications you had in your deal room before enabling the investment criteria match feature, use the "Evaluate match" button available on applications.

Deal room's investment criteria match scores are visible only to members with full edit access to company applications and the criteria can be configured by deal room admins with full settings access.

Configuring deal room's investment criteria

To configure the investment criteria of your deal room:

go to deal room settings
open the Preferences tab
in Configuration section, choose "Investment criteria"

For each rule you can set:

Name
Instructions
Weight

Name

A short title for the rule.

Instructions

Free-text instructions for the AI assistant to evaluate how well applications match the rule. The AI assistant evaluates match to each rule on a scale from 0 to 100. Both continuous scale and discrete scale rules are supported (see examples below). Ensure that your application form collects all data required to evaluate the rule according to these instructions. If the necessary data is not available, the AI assistant will be unable to calculate a match score for the rule.

Weight

The relative importance of the rule within the overall criteria. Use a value between 1 and 10 to adjust the rule’s contribution to the final result. Higher values indicate greater importance and a larger impact on the overall score. As an advanced use case, you may set the weight to 0 if you want the rule to be evaluated but excluded from the final result. You may also assign a negative weight (-1...-10), which will reduce the overall score. Just like with positive weights, -10 will have a larger negative impact on the overall score than -1.

Showstopper

Tick this checkbox if you want to strictly exclude companies matching the rule. If the rule’s score exceeds 50, the overall score will be set to 0 for the application, fully ignoring the scores of all other rules. If the rule’s score for an application is 50 or below, a negative weight of −10 will be applied in the overall application match score calculation.

We recommend keeping showstopper rules simple and not configuring too many showstopper rules. Instructions for showstopper rule need to be provided as positive sentences. For example, if you don't invest in large companies, the rule could be "Company has 100 or more employees.".

Examples of configuring deal room's investment criteria

Simple continuous scale

Rule name: Founding team size

Instructions: Company has 2-4 founders.

More specific continuous scale

Rule name: Team size

Instructions: Companies with 25+ team members will not be considered. Ideally, the company should have up to 4-10 team members.

Detailed discrete scale

Rule name: Team size

Instructions: We want to see lean but capable teams.

-If the number of team members is 1, score 20 (too risky, single founder).

-If the company has 2-4 team members, score 30 (might be considered, but probably too early stage).

-If 5-8 members, score 100 (good core team).

-If 9-15 members, score 70 (potentially overstaffed for stage).

-If more than 15 members, score 10 (too large, likely inefficient burn).

Showstopper

Rule name: Team too large

Showstopper: enabled

Instructions: Company has more than 20 team members.

Interpreting the investment match score

Color-coded circles are shown before each rule the AI assistant was able to evaluate. Here's what they mean:

Green circle = complete match to the rule
Partial green circle = partial match to the rule
Grey circle = no match to the rule
Red circle = complete match to a negative-weight or showstopper rule
Partial red circle = partial match to a negative-weight or showstopper rule
Rule is not listed = the AI assistant was unable to evaluate match to the rule

Clicking on the info icon opens explanations on why the AI assistant found that the application matched or didn't match each rule and why the match with some of the criteria couldn't be evaluated if that was the case.

If you have edited answers on a company application, the AI assistant will use the latest answers in calculating match to your deal room's investment criteria.

Updated on: 19/01/2026

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