Tribe Ventures · Working Tools
June 2026
The 30-Point
AI Vendor Test
“The meetings go well. So why aren't we getting traction?”
When the room is warm but the deal won't move, the problem usually isn't your pitch. It's that the buyer was never ready to say yes.
This is the scorecard the buyer is running on you, whether they say it out loud or not. Read your own pitch through it, and you'll find the gate you keep losing on.
Built from 15 years on both sides of the pitch: launching digital ventures inside large organizations, building and scaling startups, advising founders and CEOs, and running more vendor evaluations than I can count.
See the diagnosticWhy good meetings stall
Even with real product-market fit, individual pitches vary wildly. One buyer has the urgency. The next has the problem but not the priority. The next has the priority but no one to own the rollout. The segment is real; this particular deal may not be. That variance is the signal, and it is what this card reads.
Most founder-side advice teaches you to pitch better. This reads the other half, whether the buyer was ever ready to say yes, the half you cannot fix from the deck.
Before you score
Get three things straight first.
Who you're selling to
The three buyers
Three people, almost never the same person. The economic buyer owns the budget and the P&L line you would move. The user lives in the workflow you're touching, and their adoption is the whole game. The technical buyer vets the build and can sink a deal the other two already love. Most pitches speak to one and assume the rest, and the deal dies on the buyer you did not name. Legal and procurement sit behind all three: that is the Risk axis.
Whether to score at all
Three gates
Three gates decide whether to score at all. Stage: is your pitching motion repeatable yet, or are you still pre-pattern? Priority: is solving this even on the buyer's docket this year? Capacity: can their workflow actually convert tooling into measurable value? If any answer is no, the rubric is premature. Fix that first, because no score rescues a deal that fails a gate.
Your own bias
Founder calibration
You will likely score yourself one to two points higher than the room. Some of that is calibration error. Some of it is load-bearing founder conviction. Both are real. Use this card to find what you're under-weighting, not to talk yourself out of swinging.
The diagnostic
Six gates, thirty points, one veto.
Walk them in order and score each one to five, summed out of thirty. Two phases: first whether the deal is even real, then what could quietly kill it.
Qualify the deal
Three gates that earn the right to the next three.
Surface what kills it
Strong qualification does not save you here.
Phase 1 · Axes 1 to 3
Is this real?
Three questions that earn you the right to ask the next three. If any of these is weak, the deal isn't real yet. Fix it before evaluating blockers.
Problem fit
Problem fit
Does the buyer have a real problem here, and is a vendor genuinely the right tool versus manual workaround, internal build, or doing nothing?
Does the buyer have a real problem here, and is a vendor genuinely the right tool versus manual workaround, internal build, or doing nothing?
Score 1
Solves a real problem, but the alternative (manual once a month, internal fix, or status quo) is cheaper, simpler, or already good enough.
Score 5
Solves a top-quartile problem on their docket, in their words, with measurable pain that beats every alternative on pain times effort.
Workflow integration
Workflow integration
Does this live inside the system where the buyer's work happens, and is their workflow tractable enough for a vendor to learn?
Does this live inside the system where the buyer's work happens, and is their workflow tractable enough for a vendor to learn?
Score 1
Separate UI or parallel workflow. Or the work depends on tacit operational knowledge that lives in people's heads, not documented anywhere.
Score 5
Lives inside the system of record. Shared identity. Workflow is rule-based or pattern-stable. Vendor doesn't have to reverse-engineer how their team thinks.
Adoption ownership
Adoption ownership
Who on the buyer's team owns the adoption, and who is sponsoring it?
Who on the buyer's team owns the adoption, and who is sponsoring it?
Score 1
Nobody has been asked. Mandated from above. No workflow owner, no executive air cover.
Score 5
A named workflow owner volunteered, with skin in the game. An executive sponsor put budget and air cover behind it. Both aligned.
Phase 2 · Axes 4 to 6
What kills it?
Three questions that decide whether a real deal survives approval. Strong Phase 1 doesn't save you here. Weak signal in any of these is a kill or re-scope.
Economic case
Economic case
What changes, by when, in numbers the buyer's CFO recognizes? Is the price predictable, and where pricing is public, is it fair versus market?
What changes, by when, in numbers the buyer's CFO recognizes? Is the price predictable, and where pricing is public, is it fair versus market?
Score 1
Productivity gains nobody can measure. Pricing on a sales call. Or public pricing that runs above comparable category benchmarks without a clear premium story.
Score 5
Dollar, hour, or rate target. Verifiable baseline. First measurable lift inside 90 days. A bill you can read on a napkin. If pricing is public, it is defensible against comparable category benchmarks.
Vendor credibility
Vendor credibility
Will the vendor still be here in 24 months, is there real proof the product works at the buyer's scale, and does the commercial model put skin in the outcome?
Will the vendor still be here in 24 months, is there real proof the product works at the buyer's scale, and does the commercial model put skin in the outcome?
Score 1
Thin-wrapper startup, one round of funding, three case studies you can't verify. Pure deliver-and-bill commercial posture with no outcome alignment.
Score 5
Proprietary data or regulatory clearance. Named institutional customers in the buyer's category. Path to standalone viability over 24 months. Commercial structure carries skin in the game (outcome-based pricing, success fees, named milestone gates, or build-and-own posture).
Risk profile
VetoRisk profile
Veto axisWhat is the worst-case downside across regulatory, security, contractual, and reputational vectors? And what mitigations are in place?
What is the worst-case downside across regulatory, security, contractual, and reputational vectors? And what mitigations are in place?
Score 1
Material exposure on at least one vector. No mitigation, no audit trail, no exit. For customer-facing tools, weight reputational two or three times higher: one bad output can cost six months of brand work.
Score 5
Regulatory clearance where required. Documented security posture. Clean exit clauses. Reputational guardrails for the vectors that matter in the buyer's category. Customer-facing tools have explicit brand-voice guardrails and rollback paths.
The veto. A 1 or 2 here means defer. The rest of the card doesn't matter. This is the one axis with a hard no, and it's how mature procurement actually works.
Read the total
Sum your six axes. The total tells you the move.
Half or worse on average. Too many gaps to bet on. Skip the meeting.
Mixed signals. Pilot only with a named workflow owner and a 90-day kill-date.
Consistently strong. Pilot now. Fund the integration. Decide on production at month four.
*A score of 1 or 2 on Risk Profile (axis 6) means defer regardless of total. The one hard no. The final wall: even a strong card on axes 1 to 5 can't carry you past procurement, legal, or InfoSec if this one fails.
Phase-aware read.A 21+ total carried by Phase 1 strength is move on it. A 21+ total carried by Phase 2 with Phase 1 weak is a misread. Fix qualification before approval.
If the prose says concern, the score must reflect concern. The framework is most useful when narrative and number agree. Resist generosity drift.
So, back to where you started. The meetings were never the problem. Now you can see whether the buyer was ever going to move, before you spend another quarter finding out the hard way.
Your move
Score your live pitch. If a gate won't move, that's the conversation.
Or send me your deck and your site, and I'll run the card outside-in on your pitch. Not a judgment, a thought-starter: where a buyer is likely to stall, and the one or two gates worth your attention before the next meeting.
I built this because I've spent fifteen years on both sides of the pitch. Selling our own tech at Flashfood while vetting vendors for our stack, the same evaluations across my work with PSL, McKinsey, and BCG, and now in my own practice, where I've run more vendor negotiations than I can count.
Same card, sharpened by both chairs. A picture of what good looks like from the buyer's seat, and a way to find what you're still building toward.
And if you think I've missed something, tell me. This is a working document, and it gets sharper every time someone pushes on it.
— Eric Tribe
Note on methodology
The six axes were distilled from notes across hundreds of pitches: selling our own tech at Flashfood while evaluating vendors for our stack, the evaluations I have sat in across PSL, McKinsey, and BCG, and the ones I run now in my own practice, where AI-native vendors pitch corporate buyers across categories.
Risk Profile carries the only veto because in practice it's the axis where procurement, legal, or InfoSec can each kill the deal alone.
The 1-to-5 anchors were calibrated against deals that landed and deals that died. The framework gets sharper with each pitch logged against it.