Nexum · Lexicon
The terms the house uses, each defined once.
The house
The house
The house is Nexum: an examining house for founder-led digital businesses, operated by Nexum Analytics Ltd in London. It examines business models, keeps the register of the records, and backs selected examined businesses with its own capital. The house signs under its own name; its marketing pages carry no personal names by design.
Analyst
An analyst is the examiner who takes a case: reads the record whole, writes the frame, works the desk, asks the five questions, drafts the findings and signs the examination with a key issued by the house.
Second reviewer
Every examination carries three signatures: the analyst's, the second reviewer's and the house's. The second reviewer is an analyst of the house who had no part in producing the examination and reads the complete case before signing: the findings against the record, the evidence cited, and everything that changed between the machine draft and the analyst's version. The reviewer's sign-off is the act that delivers the examination; the analyst's and the house's signatures are applied with it. Fellows and Members do not sign.
The Founding Faculty
The Founding Faculty is the body of Nexum's Fellows: fifty founding seats granted by application and acceptance, and a reserve of seats the house appoints.
Member
A Member holds a reading seat: register access to the findings and keystones founders have shared. A Member sends no introduction requests, but may receive and accept one a founder starts.
The committee
The grants committee is the members of the house who decide every grant. Each scores every record alone before seeing the others' scores, and an independent reviewer from outside the house co-signs each decision.
Independent reviewer
An independent reviewer from outside the house reads every shortlisted grant record and co-signs each decision.
The record
Record
A record is everything the house holds on one business: the founder's filing, the examination, and every house event since. Until the frame is locked, a filed record may return to draft and be refiled, which creates a new version. From the frame on, nothing in it is rewritten; it is only added to.
Workbench
The workbench is the founder's workspace on nexum.fund, where the record is built section by section, with AI assistance alongside, before it is filed. What is written there is the founder's.
Decision
Every examination serves a decision the founder names at filing: the choice the business faces, which the examination is written to inform. The decision and the keystone together are the frame the founder gives the house.
Filing
To file is to submit the record for examination. At filing the founder accepts the house's confidentiality undertaking, the record is content-hashed and the hash is timestamped by an independent authority, so what existed, and when, can be proved later. Filing is what starts the examination.
Standard and Advanced
The two examination services, set by the record's stage. Standard ($500) examines a business not yet earning: its reasoning, the problem evidence, the substitute in use, the delta. Advanced ($1,000) examines a business already earning: its revenue, retention, funnel and delivery record, read first. The first fifteen examinations are sold at the founding price.
Inflection
On Advanced, the inflection is what changed in the business in the last twelve months, with the numbers before and after. The examination reads the model at that point.
The examination
Examination
An examination is the house's independent, adversarial reading of a business model, delivered as a signed document within about fourteen days of filing. It answers the founder's decision, names the keystone, sets every material finding beside its evidence and its falsifier, and ranks where the model is most fragile. It gives no advice.
Frame
The frame is the framing note the analyst writes and locks before any draft exists: how the business makes money, what it depends on, where it is most likely to break and what would test each point. Every finding that follows answers to the frame.
The five questions
During an examination the analyst may put up to five questions directly to the founder. The founder's answers join the record and are cited in the findings. An ambiguity that matters is settled by asking.
Desk
The desk is where the examination is worked: the record held whole, each claim checked against its evidence, the frame directing the machine draft, the analyst's hand on everything that carries judgment.
Sections
An examination has eight sections: §0 Verdict and keystone; §1 Problem and demand; §2 Solution and delta; §3 Market and competition; §4 Model and economics; §5 Go-to-market; §6 Team and execution; §7 Risk and falsifiers. Each opens with the house's finding for that section.
Delta
The delta is the difference between what the business delivers and the substitute its customer uses today, measured in what the customer gains. §2 tests whether the gain is large enough, for enough people, to move anyone.
Keystone
The keystone is the assumption the business model rests on, and the test that would settle it. On Standard the founder names one at filing; on Advanced the founder states what the model rests on in their own words. The examination names the house's own keystone, and where the two differ, says so.
Finding
A finding is a statement the examination makes about the business: typed, graded by severity, traced to its source in the record where it has one, pinned to the part of the model it concerns where it concerns one, and carrying a falsifier. Findings are what a founder answers, a Fellow reads and the committee scores.
Falsifier
A falsifier is what would prove a finding wrong: what to observe, by when, the threshold that decides it, and what follows if it fails. Every material finding carries one, so it can be checked by someone who was not in the room.
Fragility
The fragility ranking orders the parts of the model by how little it would take to break them, each with its breaking point. It is one of four places in an examination that accept only the analyst's hand; the others are the verdict, the keystone and every falsifier.
Verdict
The verdict is the examination's answer to the founder's decision, in the house's words, signed by the analyst and the second reviewer. A verdict with nothing uncomfortable in it is presumed defective.
Limits
Every examination ends with a limits paragraph: what the house could not check, what it assumed, and what would change its reading.
Delivery
An examination is delivered when the second reviewer signs off. Delivery seals version 1, assigns the examination reference, and is the record's first house event. A delivered record enters the register once the founder opts in and the analyst has written its summary and descriptor; a confidential record stays off it.
Evidence
Claim
A claim is a figure or statement in the record bound to its source. Every figure that appears in an examination or on the instrument carries a claim; a figure without one is shown blank.
Evidence grade
Every claim is graded by what stands behind it: Verified, where the house checked it against a source (exports, invoices, analytics); Reported, where the founder stated it; Assumed, where the founder or the analyst supplied it without evidence. The grades appear beside the figures when the reader switches on Show evidence.
Basis
Every figure the founder files carries a basis: measured, estimated or target. A blank figure carries the reason it is blank.
The instrument
Model Instrument
The Model Instrument draws a business model as parts, engines and a keystone, with the findings pinned to the parts they concern. From method 1.2 the house draws one in every examination from the record, under the framework for the business type, and the analyst approves it part by part. A free version for founders runs at nexum.fund/instrument.
Part
A part is one component of the model as the instrument draws it. Each carries a title and, where a claim supports it, a figure.
Engine
An engine is the loop that connects parts and makes the model move: what brings customers, what they pay, what that pays for. The framework for a business type defines which engines may exist.
Framework
A framework is the house's definition of what parts and engines a business type may have. Five are in use: subscription, usage, marketplace, services and games. The instrument may show nothing the framework does not define.
States
The instrument is drawn in fixed states. As filed is the model as the record describes it. As intended appears only where the founder declared a change, and shows the model after it. Under strain is the filed model with the house's keystone falsifier applied. No state is invented.
Pin
A pin fixes a finding to the part of the model it concerns, so the drawing shows where each finding lands.
Breaking point
Every item in the fragility ranking carries a breaking point: the value at which that part of the model fails.
Proof
Signature
An examination is signed with keys the house issues: one for the house and one for each examiner. The three signatures cover the canonical record of the examination, so any change to its content breaks them.
Key log
The public log of the house's signing keys, which key belongs to whom and from when, mirrored outside the house at github.com/nexum-fund/nexum-keys. Verification reads the log.
Verify
Anyone holding an examination can check it at nexum.fund/verify: that the signatures are valid, that the keys were the house's at the time, and that the content is what was signed. The published commands check the same against the mirrored key log.
Examination reference
Every delivered examination carries a reference in the form NX-FAR-YYYY-NNNN: the house, the service (Founder Analysis Report), the year, the number. References are assigned at delivery only. Blind awards are announced by reference; named awards by company.
Version
Delivery seals version 1. A point version records the founder's reply, a decision taken, a thirty-day note, a change of consent or a redaction, and is signed again by all three signatories. The content of a sealed version is never altered; a version the house finds wrong is marked corrected or withdrawn, and stays on the record.
Method and format
The format is the structure of the examination document; the method is how the house produces it. Both are versioned, and each examination states which it was made under. Format 1.0; method 1.2 at the time of writing.
Static edition
Every examination exists as a fixed edition: the document with the instrument as a still image and a text equivalent of its as-filed state, for printing and archiving.
Blind mode
In blind mode an examination is readable without identifying the company: names generalised, figures shown as bands, percentages left exact. The instrument keeps its shape; only its titles and figures are banded. The blind rendering is approved separately by the analyst.
Specimen examination
A specimen is a worked example the house produced against its own method on a composite business. It is unsealed and unsigned, and says so. Corvid and Bidfold are the house's two specimens; a specimen is a demonstration of the format and no one's record.
The register
Register
The register is the house's list of examined businesses, one entry per record, dated by its most recent house event. The listing and the full set are read by Fellows and Members; introductions are taken by Fellows. An examined founder holds register access for a year with either examination.
Entry
An entry is a business's place on the register. When consenting to publication the founder chooses the mode: named, by company, or blind, by examination reference.
Showcased examination
A showcased examination is one entry the founder has consented to publish, readable by anyone at its own page without a seat. The register itself stays with the seats.
House event
A house event is a dated act of the house on a record: an examination delivered, a point version sealed, the analyst's register summary saved, a milestone verified, a grant awarded. A record's date is the date of its latest house event.
Re-examination
A re-examination is a second examination of the same business, delivered on the same entry. The register shows it as the entry's latest house event, above the first examination's date.
Introductions
Introduction
An introduction is a conversation the house opens between a Fellow and an examined business that has signalled openness to one. The founder's identity does not cross until the founder accepts. A request through the register stands for seven days; one between acquaintances, fourteen.
Intent
An intent is what a founder has declared the business open to: partnerships, pilots and customers, distribution, advisory, or expansion. Capital is not an intent; the house opens no conversations about investment.
The grants
The grants
Each cycle the house backs the strongest businesses it has examined with its own capital: grants carrying no equity, warrants, revenue share or convertible terms, non-repayable unless an award rests on a misrepresentation or the funds are misapplied. The examination is the application; the grants carry no fee of their own. The house funds the test the examination named.
Cycle
A cycle is the period in which examined businesses may enter the grants. Cycle 1 runs from 7 October 2026 to 5 January 2027, with 22 December the last day to file a record for it. From Cycle 2, each cycle runs ninety days.
Track
Records are read in two tracks, each against its own kind: Standard, for businesses not yet earning, and Advanced, for businesses already earning. The committee divides the allocation between the tracks by the strength of the records in each.
Opting in
A founder enters the grants by opting in on the draft or the record page: the amount sought within the range, and in up to 150 words, which test from the examination the money runs and what number it produces. Both can be revised until the cycle closes.
The six criteria
The committee scores every record from 0 to 5 on six published criteria: the business, evidence, the decision and what followed, what the grant settles, milestones and integrity. The shortlist is set on the first five, reweighted; milestones are scored afterwards, on the plan. A record needs a weighted score of 3.0 from every member, with no criterion at 0.
Shortlist
The shortlisted records are those that cleared the criteria. Each shortlisted founder speaks with the committee and sends a one-page plan within seven days: the amount, the use of funds, and two or three milestones with the evidence that will prove each.
Awarded, Deferred, Declined
Every shortlisted record ends the cycle in one of three states, with a short written summary of the committee's reasons. A deferred record stands in the next cycle. A declined record may opt in again once a re-examination or a verified milestone sits on it.
Grant Agreement
The agreement signed within 45 days of an award, unless the committee extends the period, after the house's checks are completed. The first tranche is paid on signature.
Milestone
A milestone is an outcome the founder proposed in the grant plan: concrete, proportionate and verifiable by the house. A milestone the house has verified is a house event.
Tranche
A grant is paid in two or three tranches over at most nine months. The first, at most 40%, is paid on signature of the Grant Agreement and completion of the house's checks; the rest against milestones, the last, at least 20%, on verified completion of the final one.