Four states, nothing more
Every line is in exactly one of these. There are no scores, ratings or recommendations.
A Reference’s email reply said yes.
Scheduled, and hasn’t happened yet.
The Owner says it. Nobody has confirmed it.
Unresolved, contradicted, or answered no.
Who is in a room
The Owner
The founder of a company room, or the GP of a vehicle room. Adds the lines, invites Recipients, and is the only person who ever sends a question to a Reference.
Recipients
People the Owner invited to read: investors, co-investors, reviewers. They sign the room’s NDA on the way in and read free. They can ask the Owner to get any line confirmed.
References
The outside party who knows the fact: a customer, a lender, a regulator, an auditor. They get one plain question by email and answer by replying.
How a line gets confirmed
- One fact, one question. The Owner sends the Reference a yes-or-no question about one fact. It never carries amounts or financing words, so the Reference confirms a fact, not a deal.
- A plain email. It arrives as “[Owner’s name] via On Record”, in plain text, with no links and no tracking.
- The Reference replies from their own inbox. We check the email’s cryptographic signature (DKIM): it must come from the Reference’s own domain, signed by that domain.
- The first line decides. A clear yes confirms the line. A clear no opens it. Anything else, “yes, but…” included, leaves it where it was.
- The reply stays on the record. The line reads “Confirmed by email from [domain], [date], reply attached”, and the original message is kept.
Only an email reply confirms. No button, link, upload or pasted text can. That one standard applies everywhere.
History is never edited
Every change to a line is a new entry in its history: what changed, why, who did it, and when. Nothing is edited or deleted. If a Reference withdraws a confirmation, that is a new entry too, and the line goes back to where it was.
What On Record never does
- No verdicts: no scores, ratings, or “good deal” and “bad deal”.
- No tracking: no pixels, fingerprinting, read receipts or third-party analytics. We don’t record who opened what.
- No money steps: no wires, capital calls, commitments or investment documents.
- No matching: no pairing investors with companies, and no “who else is looking”.
Got a question from On Record? Here’s what it means.