Who we are
This site is published by V. Steward Group LLC, a New York company. "We" and "us" mean that company. "You" means the person using the site or sending us a venture to evaluate. Questions go to vernon@vstewardgroup.com.
Using this site
What you may do
You may read the site, link to it, and quote short passages with credit. You may share links to our pages freely.
What you may not do
- Copy pages, designs, case studies, or other materials and present them as your own.
- Use automated tools to scrape or copy the site in bulk.
- Send the evaluation form on someone else's behalf without their permission, or send it with false information.
- Try to interfere with the site, the form, or the accounts behind them.
The content on this site
Case studies, figures, and descriptions of past work are accurate to the best of our knowledge at the time of writing and are provided for information. They describe what happened for those clients and are not a promise of results for you. The site is provided as it is; we do not promise it will always be available or free of errors.
Links to other sites are provided for convenience. We do not control those sites and are not responsible for what is on them.
The venture evaluation
When you send us an idea through the evaluation form, these terms apply to the work that follows. They are the whole agreement for the evaluation unless we sign something else with you.
How it works
You send the form. We may ask a few follow-up questions by email. We research your venture using public information and what you shared, run it through our ten-step framework, and give you our professional opinion in a set of documents and, if you want it, a private web page. We aim to reply within a few business days and to finish within a few weeks, but we do not promise timing.
We may decline an evaluation, or stop one part way, for any reason, for example if the venture is outside what we can assess, if we have a conflict with a client, or if the information we need is not available. If we stop, we tell you and delete what you sent if you ask.
We use AI tools to assist with research, drafting, and an independent review. A person reads the evidence, makes every judgment, and writes every verdict. How the tools handle your information is in our privacy policy.
What you get, and what it is not
The evaluation is our opinion, formed in good faith with the evidence available at the time. It can be wrong. Public sources can be out of date or mistaken, and we do not verify every figure. We do not guarantee any outcome for your venture, that our research is complete, or that any number in it is accurate. Verdicts such as GO, CONDITIONAL GO, PIVOT, and NO-GO are judgments, not predictions, and the conditions attached to them are our suggestions, not requirements we enforce.
The evaluation is not investment advice, legal advice, tax advice, or accounting advice, and we are not licensed to give any of those. Decisions about your venture, including whether to raise money, spend it, hire, or stop, are yours. Have qualified advisors review anything you rely on.
The evaluation may describe competitors and quote public statements about them and about you. Those descriptions are our reading of public sources on the dates cited. They are prepared for you, not for publication, and you agree not to publish them in a way that presents our opinions about a third party as fact.
Confidentiality
What you share with us is confidential. We do not publish it, name you, or describe your idea in a way that identifies it without your written permission. We do not share it with other clients. We may reuse what we learn across evaluations in anonymized form: patterns and lessons with nothing that identifies you, your company, or your idea.
Confidentiality does not cover information that is already public, that you make public, that we already knew, or that we are required by law to disclose. If we are required to disclose, we tell you first when the law allows.
If you want to name us or quote the evaluation in public, ask first; we usually say yes. If we want to name you as a client, we ask first, and you can say no.
The private web page
If you ask for a web version, we host it on a hosting provider's servers behind a passphrase and hidden from search engines. That is not real access control: anyone who has the link and the passphrase can open the page, and the documents beside it can be reached by anyone who has their addresses. You are responsible for who you give the link and passphrase to. We take the page down when you ask and may take it down ourselves, without notice, after the retention period in our privacy policy or if hosting becomes impractical. Keep your own copy of the documents.
What is yours and what is ours
Your idea, your documents, and your data stay yours. We claim no rights in them and use them only to produce the evaluation.
The evaluation we produce is yours to use for your venture in any way you like, including sharing it with your team, advisors, lenders, and investors, and it can be edited by you after delivery. If you edit it, remove our name or say that it has been changed.
Our framework, methods, templates, checklists, scoring, document designs, and the way we build the web page stay ours. You may not resell the evaluation, offer it or a copy of it as your own service, reverse-engineer our templates, or use them to produce evaluations for others.
If you send us suggestions about our service, we may use them without owing you anything.
No fee, no obligation
The evaluation is free. Accepting it does not oblige you to hire us, and it does not oblige us to do further work. If we offer paid work afterward, it is under a separate written agreement, and these terms continue to cover the free evaluation.
What we need from you
You confirm that you are at least 18, that you are allowed to share what you send us, and that it does not include anyone else's confidential information or personal data without their permission. If you send us something by mistake, tell us and we delete it. You are responsible for what you do with the evaluation.
No warranty
The site and the evaluation are provided as they are, without warranties of any kind, whether stated or implied, including any implied warranty of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, or accuracy. Some places do not allow this exclusion, in which case it applies as far as the law permits.
Limits on our liability
Because the evaluation is free and is an opinion, we are not liable for any loss that comes from relying on it or on this site, including lost profits, lost funding, lost opportunities, or the cost of a decision you make with it, whether the claim is in contract, negligence, or otherwise. If a court finds that we are liable for something despite this, our total liability to you for everything arising from these terms is limited to one hundred dollars. Nothing here limits liability that the law does not allow to be limited.
Your responsibility to us
If someone brings a claim against us because you sent us information you had no right to share, or because of how you used the evaluation, you agree to cover our reasonable costs of dealing with that claim.
Ending the arrangement
You can withdraw at any time by emailing us; we stop work and, if you ask, delete what you sent. We can stop as described above. The sections on confidentiality, ownership, warranty, liability, your responsibility to us, and governing law continue after the evaluation ends.
Disputes and governing law
If you have a problem with us, email us first and we will try to sort it out within 30 days. These terms are governed by the laws of the State of New York, without regard to its conflict-of-law rules, and any dispute that we cannot resolve is heard in the state or federal courts located in New York County, New York. Each of us agrees to those courts.
General
- If any part of these terms is found unenforceable, the rest still applies.
- If we do not enforce a term on one occasion, we can still enforce it later.
- You may not transfer your rights under these terms to anyone else without our written agreement. We may transfer ours if we sell or reorganize the business, and we would tell you.
- These terms and the privacy policy are the entire agreement between us for the site and the free evaluation.
Changes
If we change these terms, we update the date at the top. Changes apply to the site from that date. They do not apply to an evaluation already under way unless you agree to them.
Contact
Questions about these terms go to vernon@vstewardgroup.com. See also our privacy policy.