Product Reality Check for VCs
See the Real State of a Startup Product Before You Invest
Uncover risks affecting growth and scaling and see how the team responds to feedback.
Get the first 3 screenings for free.
Trusted by Swiss and EU startups
For Investors Without a Technical Team
The pitch deck looks great. The product might not.
Many early-stage products look impressive in demos but fail during real user flows.
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Pitch decks rarely reflect the real product
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Many MVPs break under real user conditions
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Funding is often for rebuild, not for growth
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No time to run full technical DD on every deal
Product Screening
Get the real state of the product in 24 hours.
Our QA engineers have tested 500+ products, allowing them to quickly identify critical product risks during exploratory testing.
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500+ digital products tested
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Report with concrete issues and risks
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Results delivered within 24 hours
What Investors Learn
Learn how the team works in practice.
See how the team approaches quality and what standard of work they deliver by examining the product they build.
Reveal how they react to feedback: they ignore or fix them quickly.
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Lightweight technical due diligence for early-stage products
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Get results within 24 hours clear product risk overview
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Share the report with the team and observe how they respond
Partner Testimonials
How we helped our partners
“The screening helped us understand not just the product, but the team behind it. The issues themselves were fixable, but the reaction to feedback told us much more about future collaboration.”
Anonymous Partner
Early-stage VC
Importance of reaction
The product looked promising, but the reaction revealed deeper risks.
A startup delivered a stable product with only a few visible issues. However, the way the team reacted to feedback revealed collaboration risks for future scaling.
When the investor shared the screening report, the team became defensive and was slow to react.
When the investor shared the screening findings, the team responded defensively instead of investigating the issues.
Rather than acknowledging the problems or asking follow-up questions, the initial response focused on explaining why the issues “should not happen” or “were unlikely”.
For investors, this reaction can be a signal that the team may struggle with external feedback during growth.
Early-stage companies move fast, but the ability to accept and act on product feedback is critical for scaling.
Several issues affected key user flows, including onboarding and verification.
However, the team did not treat these as urgent problems.
No clear timeline or immediate fix was proposed after receiving the report.
For investors, this can signal that product reliability is not yet a core priority, which can slow down growth once real customer volume increases.
The issues discovered during screening were not edge cases — they appeared during normal product usage.
This suggested that releases may not go through a consistent QA process before shipping.
While this is common in early-stage startups, it becomes a risk when scaling, as product instability can directly affect activation, retention, and revenue.
The screening highlighted not only the issues themselves, but how the team currently approaches product quality.
Importance of prouct readiness
Startup claimed strong traction, but product wasn’t ready for scale.
Before technical due diligence, we ran a product screening to see the product’s real state in practice.
Within hours, critical product risks appeared during normal user flows, helping the investor postpone deeper technical evaluation.
The signup process failed during normal user conditions.
New users could create accounts, but the onboarding flow stopped before reaching the core product features.
This meant most first-time users would never reach the product’s value.
If unnoticed, this could significantly impact growth and user retention.
The payment flow accepted invalid data and occasionally processed incomplete transactions.
This created a risk of failed subscriptions and revenue inconsistencies once user volume increased.
The issue suggested that the payment infrastructure had not yet been tested under real user scenarios.
Email verification occasionally failed, leaving newly created accounts in an inactive state.
Users were unable to proceed without manually restarting the registration process.
This type of issue often remains unnoticed during internal demos but becomes critical during real user onboarding.
“The screening helped us quickly understand the real state of the product before committing to deeper due diligence. It saved us significant time in the investment process.”
Anonymous Partner
Early-stage VC
Pricing
Whether you're looking for an ad-hoc session or planning for a longer term, we have a plan that aligns perfectly with your goals.
3 Session Free Trial
- Use up to 14 days
- No payment needed
- Results in 24h
- Only NDA is signed
10 Sessions Package Deal
- Use up to 12 months
- Pay upfront or monthly
- Results in 24h
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One-time Framework Agreement
No need for an individual contract for each session based on the Framework Agreement.
- Save 50% from Individual Prices!
Individual orders
- Use anytime
- Pay upfront per order
- Results in 48h
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Per-session Orders
For each order an individual contract must be signed based on the Framework Agreement.
From Quick Product Check to Technical Due Diligence
Quick Product Check
Fuserwise
Product Screening
Technical Due Diligence
Who tests
Investor / partner
Expert testers
Technical consultants
Time required
1–2 hours
8 hours
1–3 weeks
Coverage
Very limited
Core product flows
Full technical stack
Viewpoint
Investor
impression
Independent product perspective
Code-level technical perspective
Output
Gut feeling
Structured product report
Technical audit
Price
Free
from €195
€2k–€10k
Frequently Asked Questions
All the answers you're looking for.
When evaluating a startup, investors often focus on market potential, traction, and financials. The actual product is rarely tested in depth.
A product screening gives you an independent view of how the product performs in real user scenarios. It reveals whether the product is stable and usable, or if significant technical work is still required.
This helps you understand whether your investment will fund growth and scaling, or whether it will first need to cover product fixes and refactoring.
An 8-hour screening is not meant to replace full technical due diligence. Its purpose is to quickly identify product risk signals.
Experienced testers focus on the areas where early-stage products most often fail: onboarding, core user flows, feature reliability, and edge cases. In most products, these areas reveal whether the product is stable, usable, and ready for real users.
While it is not a complete technical audit, this type of exploratory testing is very effective at uncovering critical usability issues, broken flows, and product instability within a short time.
The goal is to help investors quickly determine whether a startup is ready for growth or likely to require deeper technical work before scaling.
In short:
- Product screening helps investors decide whether a startup is worth deeper technical due diligence.
- Technical due diligence confirms the technical safety of the company before investing.
Product screening is most useful once a startup has a working product, typically an MVP, beta, or early production version used by customers.
For investors, it works best during the deal screening phase, before committing time and resources to full technical due diligence.
At this stage, the screening helps determine whether the product is stable and usable, or if significant technical work may still be required before scaling.
This allows investors to quickly identify product risks early in the evaluation process and decide whether deeper due diligence is justified.
No. Product screening is not a replacement for technical due diligence.
Technical due diligence is a deep technical audit that reviews the codebase, architecture, infrastructure, and security before an investment decision is finalized.
Product screening serves an earlier purpose. It provides a fast, independent assessment of how the product actually performs from a user perspective, revealing usability issues, broken flows, and potential product risks.
In practice, screening helps investors decide whether a startup is ready for deeper technical due diligence, or whether significant product work may still be required first.
Yes. All screenings are treated as confidential.
The report is delivered only to the investor who requested the screening and is not shared with third parties unless you decide to do so.
We only test the product through normal user access and do not attempt to access internal systems or sensitive data. We do start our collaboration with signing an NDA.
The process is designed to be simple and flexible.
- Framework agreement
We set up a simple framework agreement with no minimum commitment. - Order a screening session
Whenever you want to evaluate a product, you can request an 8-hour screening. - Product testing
Our testers evaluate the product from a real user perspective, exploring onboarding, core flows, and reliability. - Report delivery
Within 24 hours after the session, you receive a structured report with the findings.
Each screening is ordered individually and invoiced after delivery.
We screen digital products that can be accessed and used like a real user would. This includes most web platforms, mobile applications, and SaaS products.
The screening works best for B2C products and open B2B platforms where the core user flows can be explored without internal system access.
Because the screening focuses on real user experience, we do not need access to the codebase. As long as the product can be used or tested from the outside, it can typically be screened.
No. In most cases, we do not need direct access to the startup team.
Product screening is performed from a real user perspective, so we typically only require access to the product itself, for example a public platform, demo environment, or test account.
If additional access or clarification would help explore specific areas of the product, we can coordinate with the startup team, but this is not required for most screenings.
No. Product screening does not require access to the codebase.
The evaluation focuses on how the product performs from a real user perspective. We test the platform by interacting with it the same way customers would, exploring onboarding, core features, usability, and reliability.
Because of this approach, the screening can usually be performed using only a public product environment, demo access, or a test account.
The screening results are delivered as a structured report that summarizes the key findings, including critical product issues, usability risks, and observations from the tested user flows.
By default, the report is created in Notion, which makes it easy to review, share internally, and discuss with partners or founders.
If you already use a ticketing or project management system such as Linear, ClickUp, or Jira, the findings can also be imported there so that development teams can act on the issues directly.
Not necessarily.
In many cases, the screening can be performed simply by using the product as a normal user would, without requiring any direct involvement from the startup team.
If preferred, the investor can also choose to inform the founders or request a dedicated test account. We are happy to coordinate with the startup if that approach better fits the investment process.
In either case, the screening focuses only on normal product usage and does not attempt to access internal systems or sensitive data.
The report is typically delivered within 24 hours after the 8-hour screening session is ordered.
This includes a structured overview of the findings, key product risks, and detailed issue reports discovered during the testing.
The fast turnaround allows investors to quickly incorporate the insights into their deal evaluation or internal investment discussions.
Start Today
Products matter.Teams matter more.
See the real product before investing.
Invest in teams who prioritize quality from the beginning.
By submitting the form, you request a free Pre-Screening trial. You’ll receive a confirmation email outlining the next steps.