Frequently asked questions

What it costs, and what you get back for it.

• Free tierIs the free plan actually usable, or just a trap?+

  It's genuinely usable, with no time limit and no credit card. The free Founder Dashboard gives you unlimited monthly metrics, up to 5 investor visibility tiers, email updates to investors, and access to the open /standard metric library. Paid Founder tiers are coming soon and will add the login-gated investor portal and more investor seats — but the free dashboard stands on its own, and many solo and pre-seed founders will stay on it indefinitely.

• SpreadsheetsWhy pay anything when a spreadsheet is free?+

  A spreadsheet has zero structure and no memory: numbers drift between versions, definitions change quietly, and you rebuild the same investor report every month — 2 to 4 hours, every month. The free Founder Dashboard already fixes that: enter one canonical number per month against a shared definition, and your investors stop seeing three different versions of revenue. Paid tiers are coming soon (around $79–149/mo) for the login-gated investor portal, but the core time-saver — one clean monthly number instead of a spreadsheet rebuild — costs nothing.

• PriceIs $149/month worth it for a seed-stage company?+

  Today the Founder Dashboard is free, so nothing is steep yet. When paid Founder tiers arrive, most founders will land on the lower tier (around $79/mo, up to 5 investors); the higher tier (around $149/mo) is for 5 to 10 institutional investors, where a single misreported number in a board meeting costs more than a year of subscription. And the free tier covers pre-seed and solo founders for as long as they need it.

• Investor costDo my investors have to pay to see my numbers?+

  No. Investors see your updates for free, always. The separate Investor tier exists only for investors who want their own dashboard across many portfolio companies — that's their tool, not a toll on you.

Whether the problem is real for you yet.

• Status quoI already email investor updates. Why switch?+

  You can keep emailing — the free tier sends those updates for you. What email can't do is hold one locked source of truth, keep a 12-month history, or let an investor compare you fairly against the rest of their portfolio. Email scatters your numbers across inboxes; TrueNorth keeps one version everyone references.

• TimingAren't we too early for metrics tooling?+

  The discrepancy problem starts the moment more than one investor is reading more than one number. Building the one-clean-number-a-month habit early is far easier than untangling two years of inconsistent updates later — and it costs nothing to start.

• DemandMy investors haven't asked for this.+

  They feel the pain on their side: every company they back defines metrics differently, so they can't line them up. Being the founder who reports one clean, consistent number is a trust signal that compounds across rounds.

• VisionIs this only about startup metrics?+

  Today, yes — and that's the most useful place to start. But the principle is bigger than startups: one canonical number, defined by an open standard and traceable to where it came from, shared on your terms. That same discipline — numbers you can trust because you can trace them — is what private markets need at every scale. Founders get the first, most useful version of it.

Who sees what, and who stays in charge.

• ControlDoes this expose more of my data to investors than I want?+

  It's the opposite. TrueNorth is founder-first by design: you set per-investor visibility tiers and per-metric overrides, so each investor sees exactly what you choose and nothing more. It's built for founder control, not investor access-maximization — which is the core reason founders pick it over investor-centric tools.

• OwnershipWho owns the data I put in?+

  You do. Your metrics are yours to edit, share, and take with you — TrueNorth is the place you keep your version of the truth, not the owner of it.

• ConfidentialityIs anything public by default?+

  No. Nothing is shared until you choose to share it. Benchmarking works on aggregated, anonymized contributions — you're compared against a cohort, you don't expose your raw numbers to it.

What happens if you want out — or we disappear.

• ExportCan I get my data out, or am I locked in?+

  You can export. CSV export ships on the Investor tier and full data export — SQL and analytics — on the Accelerator tier, and your monthly history travels with you. You're never holding your own numbers hostage inside the tool.

• Open standardWhat if TrueNorth goes away? You're new.+

  The metric definitions are an open standard — public, not proprietary code. Your numbers stay meaningful and portable even off-platform, and the standard outlives any single tool. You're adopting a definition, not getting trapped in a vendor.

• New entrantYou have no direct competitors — is that a red flag?+

  There's no direct competitor because the category didn't exist as a product: founders hacked this with spreadsheets and investors hacked it with cap-table tools. The open standard and clean export are exactly how we take the risk of being early off your shoulders.

Why not the tool you already have.

• CartaHow is this different from Carta?+

  Carta has metrics, but it's investor-centric — founders avoid it because it's built around investor access. TrueNorth is founder-first: you own the number and control who sees it. Same data, opposite default.

• Lattice / OKRsWe use Lattice or an OKR tool — isn't that enough?+

  Those are internal team and OKR tools: powerful, expensive, and aimed at managing your people, not your investor relationship. TrueNorth does one job well — the company's shared version of the truth for the people funding you.

• TemplatesWhy not a free Notion doc or Stripe Atlas template?+

  Templates have no recurring update flow, no investor portal, no history, and no benchmarking. The value isn't the table — it's the locked monthly cadence and the portfolio view your investors get on the other side.

How hard this is to actually put to use.

• SetupHow long does setup take?+

  You enter your metrics once against the open standard and you're sharing within minutes on the free tier. Accelerators onboarding a whole cohort get bulk founder import and dedicated onboarding, so nobody is left configuring alone.

• Investor adoptionWill my investors actually log in?+

  They don't have to. On the free and Founder tiers you can still push email updates; the login-gated portal is there for investors who want it. In practice investors adopt naturally once two or three of their portfolio companies are already reporting through it.

• BenchmarkingWhat does unlocking benchmarking require from me?+

  Just reporting your monthly metrics. Once enough peers in your sector have also reported, you're compared against an anonymized cohort — median and 75th percentile by sector. Your numbers feed the aggregate, but no one ever sees your raw figures individually; peers only see cohort-level statistics.