A LabelNest Orbit + Ascent briefing

Run the programme. Build the pitch. One accepted applicant, no re-entry.

Orbit runs your accelerator or incubator programme end to end. Ascent is where every founder builds their real, investor-ready data room. The moment you accept an applicant in Orbit, they land in Ascent already enrolled, no form re-typed, no account created by hand.

See how they connect See every capability

1

Click from accepted to enrolled

11

Live Ascent capabilities

3

Automatic checks before a human reads an application

6

Real signals rolled into every cohort report

The problem

Running a programme and tracking a portfolio have always been two separate jobs.

An accelerator collects applications in a form tool, reviews them by hand, and only finds out an applicant's incorporation status or cap table is a mess after a partner has already spent an hour reading the deck. Once a cohort is accepted, everyone starts from zero again: a new spreadsheet for tracking, a new ask for each founder to send updates, no shared view of who is actually investor-ready.

📋

Applications with no early signal. A reviewer only learns about a missing IP assignment or an unincorporated entity after reading the whole application.

⌨️

The same details, typed twice. An accepted applicant fills in their company details again for the cohort tracker, the demo day deck, and every partner who asks.

🕳️

No view of cohort progress. Three months into a programme, the institution can't say how many companies are actually fundraising, or which ones stalled.

📊

A demo day report built from memory. Impact numbers for funders and stakeholders get assembled by asking each founder individually, weeks after the fact.

How they connect

One loop, not two products bolted together.

Orbit takes an applicant from a public form to an accepted cohort member. The instant you accept them, Orbit hands that acceptance straight to Ascent, the same way a human partner would, just without the typing. Every accepted founder's progress then flows back to the institution as a real cohort report, not a status update someone had to chase.

Every arrow above is a real, working step, not a planned one.

One click, not a re-entered form

Accepting an applicant creates a real cohort seat and sends the same invite a human partner would send by hand, pointed at the founder's own new data room.

The founder starts from their application, not zero

What they already told you in the application carries forward instead of being asked for again on day one of the programme.

Progress flows back automatically

Every founder's readiness score, funding status, and completed sessions roll up into one real cohort report, not a status email you had to send and chase.

Orbit

Everything it takes to run one programme, or twenty.

🏛️

Set up the programme

🏢

One institution, many programmes.

Your own branding, running as many cohorts and tracks as you need, each with its own status: draft, screening, shortlisting, incubating, or complete.

👥

Delegated managers.

Bring in reviewers for a specific programme, as an admin or a manager, without handing over the whole institution.

🎟️

Set the shape of the round.

A cap on applications, an open and close date, and an opportunity wallet the programme grants once a founder joins.

🧩

A form builder that's actually yours

No fixed application template. Every field, every section, and the scoring rubric behind it are designed per programme, then published when the programme opens.

✏️

Custom fields and sections.

Ask an early-stage SaaS cohort about ARR and a social-impact cohort about beneficiaries reached, on the same platform, with the same builder.

⚖️

Your own scoring criteria and weights.

Define what matters for this specific programme and how heavily each one counts, before a single application arrives.

📤

Draft, then publish.

Build the form and rubric privately, then publish it when the programme is ready to open.

📥

Take applications

🔓

No login to apply.

A public application link, open to anyone you point it at.

💾

Save and come back.

An applicant can start a draft and finish it later, before ever creating an account.

📎

Documents attached to the application.

Decks, incorporation certificates, whatever the programme asks for, filed against the application itself.

🔎

Review with real signal, not just a read-through

✅

Automatic checks before anyone reads the deck.

Incorporation status, IP assignment, and cap table basics flagged automatically, so a reviewer's first look already has context.

⚖️

Scored against your own rubric.

Set the criteria and the weights per programme, and every application gets a consistent, computed score.

🏁

Multiple rounds, one record.

Advance or reject at each round, every decision kept against the same application.

⚡

Accept, and it's already done

One action turns a shortlisted application into a real, live Ascent cohort seat: the founder gets a real invite, a real data room, and a place in your programme's cohort, all in the same step. Nothing to re-key, nothing to set up twice.

Ascent

Where every accepted founder actually gets investor-ready.

15

Core data room sections

107

Core fields, covering everything from cap table to IP

+1

Sector-specific section added on top

🗂️

The data room, section by section

🏢

Company identity, team, product.

Legal name, incorporation, founders, the actual problem and solution, market size, competitive landscape.

📊

Financials, traction, unit economics.

Revenue, burn, runway, customers, CAC, LTV, retention, the numbers an investor asks for first.

💰

Cap table & fundraising.

Round size, valuation, use of proceeds, the fully diluted cap table itself, ESOP pool.

⚖️

Legal, IP, employee documentation.

Litigation status, IP assignment, patents and trademarks, employee and consultant agreements.

🏛️

Company documents.

Certificate of incorporation, articles, founders agreement, board resolutions, good standing.

🛠️

Technology & architecture, pitch materials.

System architecture, product screenshots, the deck itself, an executive summary, a cover image.

🎯

Investor criteria & service partner needs.

What kind of investor and cheque size the founder is targeting, and where they know they need outside help.

🧭

Every field staged to the round.

Fields are marked pre-seed, seed, or Series A onward, so a pre-seed founder isn't asked for numbers they don't have yet.

🧬

A sector-specific section, on top of the core room

The core 15 sections are the same for every founder. On top of that, Ascent adds one section built for the startup's own sector, so a fintech founder is asked about licensing and a marketplace founder is asked about take rate, not a generic checklist.

FinTech: licensing & KYC HealthTech: clinical & regulatory SaaS: ARR & security D2C: margin & operations DeepTech: IP & readiness level EdTech: outcomes & engagement AgriTech: farm metrics & impact Marketplace: liquidity & take rate

These sector packs are built into Ascent's room today. The application itself works differently: because Orbit's own form builder lets an institution design whatever fields matter to its own programme, an incubator built entirely around social-impact startups can ask about beneficiaries reached, SDG alignment, and impact measurement right from the application, before the founder ever reaches the room. Two different layers of customization, the same idea: ask what actually matters for this programme, not a generic checklist.

Build

Data room and document vault: one real, structured place for every fact an investor will eventually ask for, instead of a folder of loose files.

Target

Funding opportunities: real capital sources surfaced to the founder, matched against their own stage and sector.

Prepare

Readiness report, diagnostic report, benchmarks, and Ask Kai: a live score on how investor-ready the room actually is, benchmarked, with an assistant grounded in the founder's own data.

Share

Share with investors and analytics: a real shareable room, with real visibility into who opened it and what they looked at.

Earn

Grants & schemes and sell on Exchange: non-dilutive capital sources surfaced alongside fundraising, and a real path to monetize the founder's own data once they choose to.

Cohort impact

The report that used to take weeks to assemble, generated from what's already there.

Because every accepted founder's real activity already lives in Ascent, a cohort report isn't a survey you send out, it's a rollup of what actually happened.

📈	Average readiness score across every founder in the cohort, not self-reported.
🎁	Grant and scheme matches surfaced for the cohort as a whole.
⚖️	Legal and audit work completed through the platform, tracked automatically.
🧑‍🏫	Mentor sessions completed by founders in the cohort.
👁️	Data room views and unique investor viewers, per founder and in aggregate.
💰	Fundraising status across the cohort: not raising, raising, or funded.

Exports as a real PDF or CSV, with a monthly trend line so an institution can show progress over time, not just a single snapshot on demo day.

Who uses what

Three real roles, one connected system.

🏛️

Institution admin

Runs every programme the institution operates, sees every cohort's real progress in one place.

🧑‍💼

Programme manager

Reviews and scores applications for the specific programme they've been given access to, nothing wider.

🚀

Applicant, then founder

Applies with no account needed, and the moment they're accepted, becomes a founder with a real, working data room.

Ready when you are

From open application to investor-ready, without the gap in between.

Live today, not on a roadmap.

See the loop again See Ascent