Programme Intelligence

Programme Intelligence makes your programme’s criteria, evidence standards and learning from previous cohorts explicit and usable across your team.

It gives the Studio a clear picture of who your programme is built for, what you look for in an application and what counts as convincing evidence. The Studio uses that picture whenever it creates an application form, analyses an applicant or presents a cohort for review.

What Programme Intelligence contains

Programme Intelligence brings together three kinds of knowledge.

Your programme’s criteria

These are the qualities your programme uses to recognise a promising founder or venture.

They include:

The founders your programme is designed to support
The qualities you value when selecting them
Your non-negotiable requirements
The outcomes participants should be ready to work towards
The relative importance of each scoring criterion

Your evidence standards

Evidence standards tell the Studio what to look for behind an applicant’s claims.

For example, an applicant may say that they understand their customer. Your evidence standards help distinguish between:

A broad description of a market
A clearly identified customer and problem
Direct evidence from customer conversations
Evidence that has already influenced the founder’s decisions

This allows the Studio to assess what the application demonstrates, not simply how confidently it is written.

What your programme learns

Every application round leaves evidence of what your programme noticed, selected and learned.

Programme Intelligence helps turn that evidence into a clearer picture of:

The strengths appearing across the applicant pool
Common gaps in applicants’ evidence
The support needs of the selected cohort
Patterns that may inform the next application round
How the programme’s selection lens develops over time

This means the knowledge created during one cohort can inform the decisions made in the next.

How the Studio uses it

Your Programme Intelligence follows the application process from beginning to end.

It helps the Studio:

Create application questions that collect the evidence your programme needs.
Separate eligibility requirements from indicators of founder or venture fit.
Analyse applications through your programme’s criteria.
Explain the evidence behind scores, grades and flags.
Show patterns across the applicant pool and selected cohort.
Carry what the programme learns into future rounds.

What this means for your team

Programme Intelligence gives reviewers a shared lens without asking them to surrender their judgement.

A new team member can see what the programme values, what evidence matters and why an application received a particular assessment. Experienced reviewers can examine the same evidence, add context and make the final decision.

The Studio does not decide what a good founder looks like for your programme. Your team defines that. The Studio helps that judgement reach every application consistently.

Keeping it useful

Programme Intelligence should reflect how your programme actually works — not how it is expected to sound.

Use specific language when describing your selection criteria and standards. Review it when:

Your programme changes its focus
Your team learns something important from a cohort
Reviewers repeatedly disagree about the same kind of evidence
An application question fails to reveal what the team needs to know
You prepare for a new application round