Every term we use, defined.

Founder

A founder is the operator of a portfolio company that has been selected into an ecosystem, and who commits a slice of that company’s economic rights in exchange for an execution budget denominated in Venture Capital Interests™.

The founder decides what work is needed, writes the scope, chooses which operator to engage, negotiates the cash-to-VCI™ split on every Ticket, and verifies delivery against the acceptance criteria they agreed. Nothing settles without their acceptance.

See also Execution Budget · Ticket · For founders

Operator

An operator is a senior professional — a fractional CxO, ex-founder or domain specialist — who delivers scoped Tickets into portfolio companies and is paid in a mix of cash and Venture Capital Interests™.

Operators are not employees, and not consultants on a retainer. They bid on Tickets they choose, propose their own terms including the cash-to-VCI™ split, and are settled only when the work is verified against acceptance criteria by both sides. Each completed Ticket adds to their Proof-of-Execution record.

Not to be confused with “operator” in the general VC sense of anyone who has held an operating role, or with the platform-team meaning used inside funds. Here it is a defined participant role.

See also The bench · Proof-of-Execution · For operators

Ecosystem Builder

An Ecosystem Builder is the organisation running an ecosystem on Execution Capital infrastructure — typically a venture fund, syndicate, accelerator, university or corporate — and holding the decision rights over selection, scoping and delivery oversight within it.

The Ecosystem Builder sets the thesis, chooses which companies enter, parameterises the ecosystem’s terms within Execution Capital standards, and owns the delivery standards applied to operators. They do not issue the units and do not hold the assets; those sit with the ring-fenced vehicle.

Previously called Ecosystem Operator. The term was retired to avoid collision with Operator, which is a different role entirely.

See also Ecosystem · Segregated Portfolio

Limited Partner LP

A Limited Partner is an investor in a venture fund, and in this model the audience for the fund-level evidence that portfolio execution generates.

LPs are not participants in an ecosystem and hold no Venture Capital Interests™ by virtue of their fund commitment. The ecosystem vehicle sits outside the fund, so it does not draw on fund reserves or alter fund economics — though a manager’s own partnership agreement and reporting obligations continue to apply as normal.

See also Proof-of-Execution · Ring-fencing

Execution Capital Ltd

Execution Capital Ltd is the UK-incorporated company that builds and operates the Execution Capital platform.

It provides the software, the standards and the base legal templates that ecosystems are built on. It does not hold ecosystem assets and does not issue units.

Execution Capital SPC

Execution Capital SPC is the offshore-incorporated segregated portfolio company that holds ecosystem assets and obligations, and through which Venture Capital Interests™ are issued.

Each ecosystem is a separate segregated portfolio inside it. The SPC structure is what allows one ecosystem’s obligations to be legally isolated from another’s assets.

See also Segregated Portfolio · Ring-fencing

Segregated Portfolio SP

A Segregated Portfolio is the ring-fenced vehicle dedicated to a single ecosystem, holding the economic rights committed by that ecosystem’s companies and issuing that ecosystem’s Venture Capital Interests™.

One Ecosystem Builder means one Segregated Portfolio. Assets and obligations are isolated to it, so a failure inside one ecosystem cannot reach the assets of another. It is also the entity that appears on a portfolio company’s cap table — as a single line.

Also referred to as the ring-fenced vehicle, the ecosystem vehicle, or the Execution Capital investment vehicle. These are the same thing described from different angles.

See also Ring-fencing · VCI™ page

Ring-fencing

Ring-fencing is the legal isolation of one ecosystem’s assets and obligations from every other ecosystem’s, and from the platform operator.

It has three practical consequences: units issued by one portfolio have no meaning in another; one portfolio’s losses cannot be met from another’s assets; and the entity issuing units is separated by duty from the entity running the software.

Ecosystem

An ecosystem is an Ecosystem-Builder-led, ring-fenced execution-financing programme, backed by a dedicated Segregated Portfolio, that issues portfolio-specific Venture Capital Interests™ against committed economic rights and settles cash and units only on verified delivery.

A complete ecosystem requires a named Ecosystem Builder, a dedicated Segregated Portfolio, a defined unit model, an ecosystem-specific legal layer, selection into a rights commitment, a Ticket system, Proof-of-Execution, and a settlement loop.

An ecosystem is not a fund. The Ecosystem Builder runs the strategy, Execution Capital provides the infrastructure, and the assets sit in a ring-fenced portfolio. It is also not a consulting agency: scope is defined in advance and settlement is contingent on shipped outcomes.

Venture Capital Interests™ VCI™

A Venture Capital Interest™ is a portfolio-level unit issued by a Segregated Portfolio against legally committed economic rights, economically equivalent to a fund unit in that ring-fenced portfolio.

VCI™ is the abbreviation; Venture Capital Interests™ is the trade mark. Units are specific to the portfolio that issued them, are never recorded on a portfolio company’s cap table, and are not transferable outside their ecosystem. Value returns to holders only through the Flowback Loop.

Not a token, and not a traded asset. There is no public market, no secondary trading, and no external trading narrative. It is not a store of value, not a hedge, and not a promise of return — it is a claim mapped to one specific portfolio’s outcomes.

See also Economic rights · Flowback Loop · VCI™ page

Economic rights

Economic rights are the legally committed claims a portfolio company contributes into a Segregated Portfolio, and against which Venture Capital Interests™ are issued.

They are committed before any unit exists, which is why issuance is backed by something already agreed rather than by a forecast.

Backings

A backing is the specific form of economic right that stands behind a portfolio’s units, defined per ecosystem by its Ecosystem Builder.

Equity-backed — shares or a convertible instrument issued into the portfolio. IP-backed — licence, royalty or commercialisation rights. Revenue-rights-backed — a defined share of future revenues. Hybrid — a combination of the above.

Issuance

Issuance is the creation of new Venture Capital Interests™ by a Segregated Portfolio in exchange for economic rights committed by a portfolio company.

Units are only ever issued at portfolio level, never by a portfolio company. The number issued is a function of the value of the rights committed and the portfolio’s unit price at that moment.

Unit price policy

A unit price policy is the published rule an ecosystem uses to set the price at which it issues units, fixed in advance rather than negotiated deal by deal.

Three shapes exist. A fixed price holds constant across a defined issuance window, which is simple and fast but risks mispricing if portfolio value moves. A net-asset-value price is rules-based and updated on a set cadence, which stays fair over longer windows but requires a valuation policy and audit trail. A hybrid policy — a fixed initial window, then net-asset-value — is the recommended default.

Unit pricing is not a marketing decision. It is the portfolio’s dilution and anti-dilution rule: issue below fair value and existing holders are quietly diluted, which is precisely what a published policy prevents.

See also Net asset value · Vintage

Net asset value NAV

Net asset value, in this context, is the rules-based value of a portfolio used to set the price per unit, marked on a defined cadence and on priced rounds.

Marking on a cadence is what protects early holders from being diluted by later issuance as portfolio value compounds.

Deployment window

A deployment window is the defined period during which an ecosystem issues units at a given price policy.

Windows exist so that everyone entering the portfolio in the same period does so on the same terms.

Vintage

A vintage is a cohort of issuance within one deployment window, comparable to a vintage year in conventional venture funds.

Closing one vintage and opening another lets an ecosystem run for years without transferring value silently between early and late participants.

Ticket

A Ticket is a scoped unit of work with a defined deliverable, timeline and acceptance criteria, agreed by both parties before work begins, and with settlement gated on acceptance.

The Ticket is the atomic unit of the entire model. Financing, negotiation, delivery, verification, settlement and evidence all attach to it. Work that cannot be expressed as a Ticket cannot be financed.

Not a task or a support ticket. The word is borrowed from issue trackers but means something closer to a scoped statement of work with settlement attached.

See also Acceptance criteria · Milestone gate

Acceptance criteria

Acceptance criteria are the written, agreed statement of what “done” means for a specific Ticket, set before work begins and used by both sides to verify delivery.

They are the reason settlement can be binary rather than negotiated after the fact, and the reason a delivery record means anything later.

Milestone gate

A milestone gate is the verification checkpoint at which delivery is confirmed against acceptance criteria and settlement is released.

Gates sit in the platform record rather than in a side agreement, and both parties confirm against the same criteria.

Milestone Ticket Pack

A Milestone Ticket Pack is a set of Tickets aligned to a company’s next two to four milestones, often spanning several operators working in parallel.

Each Ticket in the pack settles on its own verified delivery, and each accrues its own Proof-of-Execution.

Fractional role

A fractional role is a retained senior function — a fractional CTO, CFO, CMO or equivalent — delivered as a rolling set of Tickets defined by outputs rather than by hours.

The settlement rule is unchanged: verified outputs release cash and units, and time spent is not itself the deliverable.

Bid

A bid is an operator’s in-platform proposal against a published Ticket, carrying their own proposed terms including the cash-to-VCI™ split.

Because every bid uses the same structure, terms are directly comparable. The founder accepts, counters, or takes another bid.

The bench

The bench is the searchable pool of operators available to an ecosystem, with each operator’s verified delivery history attached.

An Ecosystem Builder’s own network remains theirs; the wider bench is available when depth is needed that the network does not cover.

Gap-led matching

Gap-led matching is the practice of matching operators to a diagnosed capability gap rather than to a job title.

The input is what the company is demonstrably missing; the output is people who have closed that specific gap before.

Ticket Blueprint

A Ticket Blueprint is a drafted scope — deliverable, acceptance criteria and timeline — produced for a company that knows what it needs but has not yet written it as a Ticket.

No delivery → no settlement

No delivery, no settlement is the rule that neither cash nor units are released until work has been delivered and verified against the acceptance criteria agreed in advance.

It is the founder’s primary protection and the reason an operator’s delivery record carries weight. Effort, hours and good intentions do not trigger settlement; verified delivery does.

Settlement

Settlement is the release of the agreed cash portion and the allocation of the agreed units, following verification of delivery at a milestone gate.

It is binary. Either the milestone is verified and accepted, in which case both components release, or it is not, in which case neither does.

Grow Now, Pay Later GNPL

Grow Now, Pay Later is the blended settlement model in which work is paid for with a minority cash portion and a majority in Venture Capital Interests™, commonly around 30% cash and 70% units.

The proportion is a starting point, not a rule — the split is negotiated per Ticket between founder and operator. GNPL is what lets a company engage senior operators at a fraction of the cash cost, and lets an Ecosystem Builder support a company without deploying reserves.

See also Cash portion · Execution Budget

Cash portion

The cash portion is the part of a Ticket’s value settled in cash on verified delivery, as distinct from the part settled in units.

Its existence means no operator ever works purely on speculation, and its size is agreed before work starts.

Flowback Loop

The Flowback Loop is the mechanism by which proceeds from portfolio company revenue triggers or exit events flow into the Segregated Portfolio and are used to buy back and retire Venture Capital Interests™, on a 90/10 split between holders and Execution Capital.

Two things distinguish it from conventional advisor equity. It has two triggers rather than one, so value can return on revenue without waiting for an exit. And units are retired when bought back rather than traded on, which is why no market for them exists or is intended.

Timing is not guaranteed. Flowback depends on portfolio outcomes, can run over several years, and may not occur at all.

See also Revenue trigger · Buy-back and retirement

Revenue trigger

A revenue trigger is a defined revenue milestone at a portfolio company that begins the flow of proceeds into the Segregated Portfolio.

Triggers start only after the defined milestone is met, which is a deliberate protection for the company.

Exit event

An exit event is a trade sale, secondary sale, initial public offering or comparable liquidity event at a portfolio company that sends proceeds into the Segregated Portfolio.

Buy-back and retirement

Buy-back and retirement is the process by which a Segregated Portfolio purchases units from holders using incoming proceeds and permanently cancels them.

Retirement, rather than transfer, is the only route by which value reaches a holder. This is a structural choice: it is what keeps the instrument non-speculative and stops a secondary market forming.

Repayment cap

A repayment cap is the agreed multiple at which a portfolio company’s obligation to return proceeds stops.

It bounds the company’s downside, and correspondingly bounds holder upside from that company. Caps are set per ecosystem in its own terms.

Cancellation

Cancellation is the retirement of unspent units and the return of the corresponding economic rights to the company, where a milestone gate is not reached or units go unused.

It is the mechanism behind a founder being able to recover unspent budget rather than forfeit it.

Settlement ledger

The settlement ledger is the in-platform record of what was scoped, bid, accepted, verified and settled on every Ticket, exportable and reconcilable.

Because it is the same record both parties act against, there is nothing to reconcile afterwards between separate systems.

Proof-of-Execution PoE

Proof-of-Execution is the verified record generated by each completed Ticket — what was delivered, by whom, when, and against which acceptance criteria — aggregated to portfolio and fund level.

It attaches in two directions at once: to the operator, as a delivery history they cannot claim without having earned; and to the company, as dated evidence of progress for its next round. Because it is produced by settlement rather than by reporting, it cannot be assembled retrospectively or bought.

See also Execution signal

Execution signal

Execution signal is the sourcing information produced when companies reveal how they scope, ship and behave under a defined scope — visible months before they open a round.

It exists only because the work ran through the system, which is why no data vendor sells it.

GEM

GEM is Execution Capital’s eight-stage maturity framework, used to place every company on a shared scale and to diagnose the specific gap that a Ticket should close.

It gives an Ecosystem Builder one comparable view across a whole portfolio, and it is the input to gap-led matching — work is scoped against a diagnosed stage rather than against a job description.

See also Gap-led matching

Reporting cadence

Reporting cadence is the minimum reporting rhythm required of participating companies: quarterly updates, plus event-driven updates whenever something material changes.

It is a condition of participation, not a courtesy.

Use of Funds Map

The Use of Funds Map is the framework a company uses to sort every line of its spending plan into one of four buckets, in order to identify the portion Execution Capital can finance.

It produces three outputs: a clean investor-style use of funds breakdown, a figure for the Execution Budget, and a list of Tickets with deliverables and acceptance criteria.

Buckets A, B and C

Buckets A, B and C are the three categories of company spending that Execution Capital does not finance, and which remain a company’s cash runway responsibility.

Bucket A — Core team. Founder and employee salaries, bonuses, payroll taxes, benefits, hiring costs. Bucket B — Operating stack. Cloud, software subscriptions, devices, office and admin, legal and accounting fees, insurance. Bucket C — Go-to-market cash spend. Paid advertising, events and sponsorship, PR retainers, data, commissions, customer incentives.

Bucket D the Execution Budget

Bucket D is the category of company spending covering external senior execution — fractional CxOs and specialists delivering scoped outcomes — and it is the only bucket Execution Capital finances.

To qualify, a line item must be external senior execution producing a verifiable deliverable in a defined timeframe, must have deliverables and acceptance criteria written down, and must be payable with its cash component. General advice, coaching, open-ended consulting and unscoped work do not qualify, regardless of who is doing them.

See also Execution Budget · Ticket

Execution Budget

An Execution Budget is the total value of a company’s Bucket D spending, held as Venture Capital Interests™ and spendable on operators through Tickets.

It is not a loan and not a credit line. It is a budget denominated in units, drawn down as work is delivered and verified, with anything unspent redeemable rather than forfeited.

Ecosystem Terms and Conditions

The Ecosystem Terms and Conditions are the ecosystem-specific legal documents defining participant rights and obligations, unit rules, fees, and settlement and cancellation mechanics.

Execution Capital provides the base templates and minimum clauses; each Ecosystem Builder parameterises its own terms within those standards. Where anything on this site differs from an ecosystem’s own documents, those documents govern.

No-side-deals rule

The no-side-deals rule requires that everything commercial between participants happens in the platform and is documented there.

No off-platform arrangements, no undocumented variations, no private terms alongside a Ticket. Without it, neither the settlement ledger nor Proof-of-Execution would be reliable.

Independent verification

Independent verification is the check Execution Capital performs on companies put forward by an Ecosystem Builder, separate from that builder’s own selection and diligence.

Selection remains the Ecosystem Builder’s decision. Verification is a second, independent gate before anything proceeds.

KYB

KYB, or Know Your Business, is the verification of a participating company’s identity, ownership and standing, performed once at onboarding rather than repeated for every engagement.

These definitions describe how the model is built and operated. They are written for clarity, not as legal definitions, and nothing here is an offer, an invitation to invest, or advice. Each ecosystem’s own terms and conditions take precedence over anything on this page. If a term you have met is missing, tell us and we will define it.