LODESTAR /ˈləʊdstɑː/ n. — the star by which one steers.
Private markets are dark. Navigate by a fixed point.
Lodestar produces the Liquidity Valuation Decision Pack for late-stage SaaS: a board-defensible range with its evidence, its certificate, and its outcome tracking — assembled by agents, priced by a deterministic published protocol, adjudicated by humans. In 10 business days.
§ 01 · THE PROBLEM
When private-market money moves, the number is a guess.
annual secondary volume · no structured price record
Tender offers, employee secondaries, transfer approvals, fund marks. The options today: call around and pick a number — indefensible when questioned; pay $100k+ and wait six weeks at a desk built for fairness opinions; or reuse a 12-month-old 409A built for option grants, not transactions.
What is missing is not another estimate. It is a decision file — a range the CFO can stand behind, the buyer can underwrite against, the auditor can reference, and counsel can cite, with the provenance to survive being questioned.
— every input source-graded · every assumption ledgered · every outcome tracked
§ 02 · THE ARTIFACT
Operating thesis
Decision files, not estimates.
An estimate is an opinion with confidence. A decision file is a range with provenance: the inputs hash, the evidence tiers, the capital-stack waterfall, the reliance language — and the outcome it is later scored against.
The document is the product. It is the only thing on this page that is not dark — because it is the thing you can actually verify.
Certificate · specimen
Valuation memo
Range + confidence grade. Three deterministic lenses, capital-stack waterfall, secondary liquidity discount.
Evidence map
Every claim source-graded — tier, freshness, incentive direction — with contradictions surfaced, not smoothed.
Signed certificate
Hash-anchored, protocol-versioned, verifiable by any third party. Reliance language included.
Outcome case
30/90/180-day hooks. When the tender clears or the round prices, the prediction is scored against reality.
§ 03 · THE MACHINE
Agents assemble. The protocol prices. Humans adjudicate.
Agents assemble evidence
Vertical agents run intake, chase missing fields, pull Stripe and accounting data over OAuth, extract claims from documents, and surface contradictions. Evidence logistics at software speed.
The protocol prices
A deterministic engine — no LLM anywhere in it — runs the lenses, the capital-stack waterfall, and the confidence grade under the published, versioned Lodestar Protocol.
Humans adjudicate
Senior judgment handles escalations and disputes. An adversarial second analyst attacks every paid pack before it ships (Test C).
- Invent a midpoint from narrative
- Waive the asymmetric impact rule
- Resolve contradictions in the issuer's favor
- Rewrite an outcome after the fact
§ 04 · RIGOR
Narrative cannot buy a higher number.
The asymmetric impact rule: self-reported metrics and press coverage can never raise the midpoint or narrow the band — only verified evidence can. Both sides can check that neither side can lobby the number.
Falsification tests
Hype-injection (Test A), resolved-case backtests (Test B), adversarial second-analyst review on every paid pack (Test C). Results published.
Open protocol
Published, versioned, machine-checked. Your counsel and auditors can audit the methodology before you buy anything.
No unearned accuracy claims
Calibration reports only after 50+ resolved outcomes per cohort. Until then: coverage, methodology, and miss memos.
§ 05 · HONEST PRE-LAUNCH
Where Lodestar is, right now.
No ten-year track record is claimed. The methodology, the backtest plan, and the failure analyses are published instead. Until the outcomes resolve — attack the protocol.
● live
Protocol v0.1
open · hash-anchored · falsifiable
● live
Decision Pack
10 business days, intake-complete to delivery
◐ in progress
SOC 2 Type II
audit underway
○ scheduled
Backtest Note
publishes Q3 2026
○ scheduled
Agentic evidence fabric
cutting hours per pack, month by month
○ scheduled
Cohort calibration
gated on 50+ outcomes per cohort
The platform beyond the pack — vaults, marks, benchmarks, attested compute — is sequenced and gated, not promised. See the roadmap
Have a liquidity decision with a date on it?
Tender, secondary, transfer approval, or mark. If the decision is real, the pack pays for itself in the first board question it survives.