Raising money can feel like a guessing game, with months of pitches and very little feedback on what’s actually holding you back. DDScore is a Finland-based tool that aims to fix that by running a pitch through a structured first-pass diligence analysis, scoring it across 12 dimensions and explaining the reasoning behind each score.
We caught up with founder and CEO Mikko Heilimo (and his co-founder Pasi) to find out why he built it, what founders tend to learn from a report, how much weight to give an AI-generated score, and what happens to your data once you hit upload. It’s a useful read if you’re thinking about raising, or just curious how investors might see your deck before they do.
1. Who are you, and what is DDScore in one sentence?
I’m Mikko Heilimo, a software entrepreneur with 25 years of experience in AI and a couple of exits, including in the healthcare and medical industries. I founded DDScore to give founders, investors, and funders a structured first-pass diligence analysis of a private company’s strengths, risks, and potential.
2. What problem made you build it?
It started with investor interest in a simple question: how can we efficiently check the substance behind a polished pitch deck and make investing more profitable? Investing often follows a power-law logic, making it essential to identify both the companies that could return 20× and the reasons they might fall short.
For founders, fundraising can mean six to twelve months of events and meetings, consuming time and money while producing little actionable feedback on how to become more investable. DDScore provides that critical outside view earlier to help speed up the process.
3. What does a founder actually learn from a DDScore report?
Founders quickly see their strengths and weaknesses, helping them avoid costly mistakes by addressing problems before they commit time and money. DDScore analyses 12 dimensions individually and together: business idea, offering, team, market, competitors, technology and IP, scalability, legal and regulatory issues, exit potential, presentation, financials, and fundability.
The scores provide a quick overview, but the written reasoning is the substance of the report, alongside possible outcome scenarios with estimated probabilities and an expected return multiple. The biggest surprise is often how even a promising business idea can be undermined by a single fundamental problem that a founder, caught up in the excitement, may overlook early on.
4. How does the scoring work, and how much should people trust it?
DDScore is designed to provide a more reliable assessment than a standalone frontier-model response by using more computing power, more time, multiple AI models, and additional checks. The probabilistic model draws on a meta-analysis of hundreds of academic studies on company success and tens of thousands of founder stories about why businesses succeed or fail.
Scores from 0 to 100 give a quick, approximate indication of strength, while the written reasoning explains which weaknesses need attention at the company’s stage. A separate analysis confidence value indicates how confident the system is in its assessment.
5. What’s the most common gap you see in early-stage pitch materials?
Three gaps often appear together:
An unclear path to paying customers, an unrealistic execution plan, and economics that get worse as the business grows.
The funding sought may not cover the full cost of reaching the next milestone because the plan underestimates the time, resources, and development capacity required. The real gap is whether customer demand, execution capacity, and unit economics fit together into a credible growth plan.
6. How do you handle data privacy, given that people are uploading sensitive material?
Uploaded source files are deleted when the report is generated, typically within 15 to 45 minutes, and reports are deleted within 24 hours, whether or not you download them.
We run our own servers and models in Finland under strict EU data protection rules. Some analysis steps use third-party AI services in the United States under EU-approved transfer safeguards.
Your materials are analysed on an isolated, fully automated server, with no human access while they are being processed there.
7. What’s one piece of advice you’d give a founder preparing to raise?
Find a clear focus and a step-by-step plan for turning assumptions into evidence. Investors often want to see how you and your team progress over three to twelve months. Showing that you can learn, execute, and deliver on your milestones is some of the strongest evidence you can bring.
8. What’s next for DDScore, and where can readers find you?
You can try DDScore for free by completing a short survey at ddscore.ai. Connect with Mikko Heilimo, CEO and Founder, or follow DDScore on LinkedIn for updates.
