A miniature city at night rendered as a scale model, every window dark except one warm amber window near the top of the central tower.

01 · The idea

Every bold idea starts in one room.

No accelerator. No warm intro. Just a founder, awake later than they should be, certain about something nobody else can see yet.

Seen through a window frame at night: a small dark room where a young founder in a dark t-shirt sits at a desk under a single warm lamp and talks to a phone standing upright on a tripod.

02 · The pitch

You get 60 seconds.

One vertical video. No deck, no demo day, no gatekeeper deciding whether you are allowed in the room. Record it on the phone already in your hand.

A dim hall at night where about twenty founders sit at desks with their backs to us, each with a warm lamp and a phone standing upright on a tripod. One desk in the middle of the room is empty, its lamp switched on and its chair waiting.

03 · The Chapter

Your pitch joins a Chapter.

Every Chapter is a cohort of founders over a fixed window, with a fixed Founder Award from named sponsors. You are not shouting into a feed. You are in a round with a start, an end, and a result.

A dark review hall seen from above. On the left a jury of three sits at a lamp-lit table. On the right about forty reviewers hold up glowing phones. At the far end a large screen shows a young founder speaking to camera, a wall of small video tiles hangs on the left, and an AI screen on the right shows a glowing network scanning the founder’s face.

04 · The verdict

Four signals. One score.

Community reviews 20%, AI quality 20%, expert jury 30%, uniqueness 20%. Normalised, weighted and combined. An Editor’s Pick adds a 10% bonus. No single person can hand you the win.

Three stacks of coins on a dark plinth: a tall stack glowing warm amber beside two much shorter unlit stacks of equal height, with loose coins resting on a polished rail across the front.

05 · The award

The award lands in three stages.

60% as soon as results are final. 20% at day 30 and 20% at day 60, each released against a public journey update. The money follows the progress, in the open.

A three-step podium on a circular plinth: a young founder in a dark t-shirt stands on the glowing amber centre step with both fists raised, silhouetted inside a shaft of amber light rising into the dark.

06 · The rise

Ready to rise?

Founders get an award and an audience. Reviewers build a Hero Score in public. Everyone can see exactly how the result was reached.

How it is judged

Hard to rig, on purpose.Try to break it.

One composite number, built from four independent signals, each normalised to the same 0–100 scale before any of it is weighted. Switch one off and the ceiling drops. Leave one on by itself and see how far it gets you.

Not one signal here is worth even a third of your score.

The dashed square is the Editor’s Pick. It is a real part of the hundred, but an editor can give it to no more than three pitches in a Chapter, so almost every score is made entirely of the other ninety.

Switch a signal off and on

Composite score90/100

90 out of 100: the highest a pitch can reach on its own merits.

Where do you want to start?

Enter a Chapter Review pitches instead

Questions about scoring, the fee or the award? The FAQ covers each step in detail.

How Adhunik Invest works