Privately held. Building first.
Orchords is a small, independent, remote-first company. We are privately held and not currently raising capital. The studio is funded by its founders and a small number of long-term backers who share our view that the first product matters more than the first round. This page is for the people who still want to write to us anyway.
What we offer investors
- A capital-efficient runway funded by founders and aligned backers — no debt, no bridge, no leverage on the team.
- Transparent reporting on the metrics that actually matter: shipped product, retention, cash, and the roadmap against it.
- A clean cap table. No aggressive preferences, no control clauses, no consent rights we would not sign ourselves.
- Long horizon. We measure success in years, not quarters.
- A small team, a clear roadmap, and a product people will use.
Minimum requirements — for every investor conversation
We hold every investor — angel, fund, strategic, family office — to the same baseline. It keeps our process fair and our cap table honest about the kind of partners we want on it.
A. Alignment baseline:
- ✓Long-term horizon. A minimum 7–10 year outlook on patient capital. We are not built for the next funding cycle.
- ✓Founder-friendly terms. No liquidation preferences above 1× non-participating, no board seats without our consent, no drag-along that does not protect the founding team.
- ✓Transparency commitment. Quarterly written updates, audited statements where applicable, and an open line for material questions between updates.
- ✓Ethical baseline. ESG-aligned, no extractive business models, no investments in industries whose incentives conflict with our users or our team.
- ✓Public reference. Willing to be named in our cap-table disclosure (where local law permits) so founders and employees can do their own diligence on you.
B. Working understanding of relevant ISO and reporting standards:
You do not need to be a lead auditor. You need to be able to read the standard, apply its terminology, and use it as the vocabulary for due diligence.
For every investor
- ISO 9001 — quality management. The vocabulary for any process or governance review.
- ISO/IEC 27001 — information security. The baseline for any data we will share with you.
- ISO 26000 — social responsibility. The framing for ESG conversations.
- IFRS / US GAAP literacy — the grammar of any financial statement you will read.
Funds and institutional investors
- ISO/IEC 27002 — the security control set that backs 27001. The vocabulary for technical due diligence.
- SOC 2 Type II — the supplier / customer risk framework we are audited against.
- ISO 31000 — risk management. How we think about anything that could go wrong.
- ISO 14001 — environmental management, so sustainability claims are defensible.
Strategic and corporate investors
- ISO 22301 — business continuity management.
- ISO 45001 — occupational health and safety for the team.
- ISO/IEC 20000-1 — IT service management, the ITIL cousin, if the portfolio includes tech operating companies.
- ISO 9001 — quality as a managed, measured practice across a portfolio.
Angel and individual investors
- ISO 9001 — quality vocabulary, used in plain English.
- ISO/IEC 27001 — the security baseline for any material you receive.
- Cap-table literacy — reading a capitalization table, option pool, vesting schedule, and a SAFE / convertible instrument without help.
C. Due-diligence literacy:
We share the same kind of material every serious investor reads. The minimum is to be able to do all three of these without supervision.
- →Read a financial statement. Understand a P&L, balance sheet, and cash-flow statement at line-item level. Spot accruals vs. cash, deferred revenue, and burn vs. runway. Reference the disclosure notes, not just the headline number.
- →Read a data room. Navigate a virtual data room: corporate, cap table, contracts, IP, employment, and litigation. Know what each folder is for, what to look for, and when to ask for the missing page.
- →Read an audit or assurance report. Parse an auditor opinion (unqualified, qualified, adverse, disclaimer) and the management letter that follows it. Understand materiality thresholds.
Free public resources: IFRS standards list, FASB accounting standards codification, PCAOB auditing standards, and the open ISO 9001 online browsing platform.
How we engage
Every investor conversation starts live. The session includes short checks on alignment, the standards above, and a small due-diligence exercise (read a statement, navigate a data room, parse an opinion). We share the rubric beforehand so there are no surprises, and the first call usually fits in 45–60 minutes. We sign an NDA only when there is a real reason — never as a precondition to a conversation.
Open conversations
We respond to investor enquiries in the order we receive them, after our customer and team obligations. Use the Investor enquiry chat category. Include a short note about who you are, what you do, your horizon, and why you are writing. We read everything.
Auditors, regulators, and authorised parties with a legitimate interest in our books and records can reach a confidential contact at the auditor hotline page. We do not currently file public financial statements and have no plans to do so in the foreseeable future; this page will be updated if that changes.
