# The Founder Bio Verification Standard: Verified, Discrepant, or Unconfirmed

*Grade every founder bio claim against a named primary source as Verified, Minor, Material, or Unconfirmed, then roll it up to a verdict a partner can audit.*

- Canonical URL: https://www.refolk.ai/guides/founder-bio-verification-standard
- Pillar: Investing and deal sourcing
- Format: Standard
- Published: 2026-10-17
- Last reviewed: 2026-10-17
- Reading time: 21 min
- Keywords: how to verify a founder's background before investing, founder background check checklist for VCs, verify founder degree and employment history, check founder professional license before investing, founder litigation and regulatory history search, do investors need consent for a founder background check

## Key takeaways

- A founder claim counts as verified only when a record from the issuing or registering authority confirms it. The deck, the founder's profiles, press coverage and award lists are the claims being checked, never the evidence for them.
- A degree check through the National Student Clearinghouse costs $19.95, confirms 75% of requests instantly, and is only charged if the credential is confirmed, so every degree claim should be checked at every stage.
- The $4.95 enrollment check proves attendance, not completion. Accepting it as proof of a degree is how a founder who only enrolled at Harvard for a few semesters gets graded Verified.
- In Refolk's index, only 2 of 2,885 US profiles with due-diligence or background-investigator titles list FCRA as a skill, so counsel should sign off on consent before any screening firm runs a founder check.
- In UK law, criminal offence data includes allegations and proceedings that never led to a conviction. A fund needs an Article 6 basis plus one of 28 Schedule 1 conditions, documented before processing, and the founder's consent is not that basis.
- Once governance is controlled for, education does not predict venture fraud, and governance predicts it 5.2x to 5.6x better than founder traits. Size the depth of the check to governance risk, not to how impressive the resume is.

Before a term sheet goes out, every claim in each founder's bio has to be checked against a primary source and given a grade your partners will trust. This standard is for associates, platform and talent partners, and angels who run that check. It covers what counts as verified, which source settles each type of claim, where the consent line sits, and how per-claim grades roll up to one of three verdicts: Clear, Clear With Context, or Escalate to IC.

Most founder-diligence checklists say "review founder background" and stop there. The fraud cases below show that what's missing is a definition of done. A fund that adopts this standard should get the same grade whichever associate runs the check.

## What counts as a verified founder claim?

A founder claim is verified only when a record from the authority that issued or registered the fact confirms it. The log must also show which record was used, who pulled it, and when. Anything the founder wrote, supplied, or got published is the claim itself, never the evidence for it.

The standard rests on four terms:

- **Material claim**: a statement about identity, degrees, past employers and titles, professional licenses, prior companies and their outcomes, or litigation and regulatory history. It counts if it appears in the deck, in a profile the founder sent investors to, or in the data room, or if the investment memo relies on it.
- **Primary source**: the record held by the body that issued or registers the fact. That means a registrar, a licensing board, a company registry, a court docket, a regulator database, or the employer itself.
- **Source class**: the type of primary source that is acceptable for a given claim type. Two associates must name the same class for the same claim.
- **Self-supplied material**: the deck, the founder's profiles, founder emails, press coverage, and award lists. These tell you which claims to check. They never confirm anything.

The SEC's investor guidance draws the same line. It says investors "should not make investment decisions based solely on assertions regarding the person's credentials or professional experience, including claims found on the Internet or in traditional media sources."

### The four per-claim grades

| Grade | Definition | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Verified | Primary record matches everything the claim is used to prove | Registrar confirms the degree type and date claimed |
| Minor Discrepancy | Record differs, but not in what the claim proves | Same seniority level, different title wording |
| Material Discrepancy | Record contradicts what the claim proves, or no record exists | Enrolled for a few semesters, but no degree conferred |
| Unconfirmed | Required primary source not checked, no match, or unavailable | A profile is the only evidence of a college |

### The materiality test

I could not find a published counsel or practitioner threshold for materiality, so this standard sets one as policy. Ask one question of every discrepancy: **does it change what the claim was used to prove?**

- Degree claimed, but only enrollment on record: Material. The claim was there to show completion.
- Degree conferred, major recorded under a different name: Minor, unless the memo relies on the specific field.
- Employer confirms a lower seniority level than the title claimed: Material. Same level, different wording: Minor.
- Dates shifted, but the order of roles and any claimed overlap are unchanged: Minor. Shifted dates that create or hide an undisclosed gap or overlap: Material.
- Prior company exists, but the claimed sale or exit did not happen: Material.
- License never held, lapsed during a claimed period, or carrying discipline that wasn't disclosed: Material.
- Any discrepancy the founder declines to explain: Material.

> **Note:** Materiality here is fund policy, not law
>
> No regulator or published practitioner standard defines a material founder discrepancy. Adopt this test in writing so the grade comes from the policy rather than from whoever ran the check.

## Which primary source settles each claim type?

Each claim type has one acceptable primary-source class. A claim checked against anything else stays Unconfirmed, however convincing the other source looks.

| Claim type | Acceptable primary source class | Never sufficient alone |
|---|---|---|
| Degree | Clearinghouse degree record, or the registrar | Profile, deck, enrollment record |
| Employer and title | Employer HR or third-party employment confirmation | Profile, deck, press |
| Professional license | Issuing licensing board; FINRA BrokerCheck or SEC IAPD for securities | Deck, profile |
| Prior company and outcome | Secretary of State or Companies House registry; acquirer filings | Founder's account, press |
| Litigation and regulatory | PACER, state dockets, bankruptcy court records, regulator databases | Founder's self-disclosure alone |
| Award or honour | The publisher's own list | Founder-supplied badge or press |

Employment has no public registry, so the employer's HR team, or a third party confirming with that employer, is the only primary source. **Identity** has no separate registry in this standard either. A founder's identity counts as verified when the legal name and any prior names on the signed disclosure lead to the same person across the records the other checks return. A primary record that shows the founder under a name not on the disclosure is a discrepancy, and it gets graded like any other.

#### Where a source sits in the evidence hierarchy

1. **Issuing authority record** - Registrar, licensing board, company registry, court docket, regulator database, employer HR
2. **Authorized intermediary** - Degree clearinghouse acting for registrars; third party confirming with the employer
3. **Public secondary** - Press coverage, award lists, third-party write-ups. Use them as leads only
4. **Self-supplied** - Deck, founder profiles, founder emails. This is the claim under test

*Only the top two layers can move a claim to Verified, and everything below them only tells you what to check.*

> **Rule:** Self-supplied material never confirms a claim
>
> A deck, a profile link, a press piece, or an award badge cannot move a claim to Verified. Colangelo emailed investors his LinkedIn profile listing a college he never attended, and Thomas claimed a Fortune honour that does not exist.

### Degree verification routes

The National Student Clearinghouse confirms degree type, major, and graduation date when it finds a match. It does not cover all high schools, community colleges, or international institutions, so for those schools the registrar is the source.

| Route | Cost | Turnaround |
|---|---|---|
| Clearinghouse, via third party | $19.95 plus school surcharge | Instant for 75%; 1-3 business days for the rest |
| Clearinghouse, peak periods | Same | Up to 2 weeks in summer and over holidays |
| Direct registrar | $30-$50 (unverified secondary source) | 5-7 business days (unverified secondary source) |

**$19.95 - Cost of a Clearinghouse degree verification, charged only if the credential is confirmed**

A miss costs nothing, so checking every degree claim beats deciding which ones look suspicious.

One trap: an enrollment verification costs $4.95, which is cheaper than a degree check. It proves attendance, not completion, so it is exactly the check a founder who enrolled but never graduated will pass.

For licenses, registries, and dockets, the sources were not fetched for this standard: licensing boards, BrokerCheck, IAPD, Secretary of State and Companies House registries, PACER, state dockets, and bankruptcy records. Their fees, coverage, and turnaround are not verified here. Treat "same day" for dockets and registries as an assumption until you have timed it on your own deals.

## Do investors need consent for a founder background check?

If the fund pulls public records itself, US consumer-report consent rules probably do not apply. That reading comes from the statutory definition, though, not from any ruling about investors. Once a screening firm compiles a report on a founder, get written authorization. In the UK, any criminal record check needs a documented lawful basis before it runs.

### The US consumer-report boundary

The FCRA covers communications "by a consumer reporting agency bearing on a consumer's credit worthiness, credit standing, credit capacity, character, general reputation, personal characteristics, or mode of living" that are used to decide eligibility. A fund searching dockets and registries itself is not a consumer reporting agency (CRA).

Once a screening firm is involved, the analysis changes:

- **Business-need purpose is weak for principals.** It requires "a business transaction initiated by the consumer." In *Pappas v. Calumet City*, a court found "no permissible purpose to obtain a consumer report on the corporate principal based on the report user's dealings with the company."
- **Compliance counsel default to written consent.** Their published view is that reports on principals who are not parties to the transaction "may only be obtained upon their written consent."
- **The pitch question is open.** Nobody has publicly established whether pitching a fund counts as a consumer-initiated transaction, and I found no FTC or CFPB guidance specific to equity investment.

The policy that follows: whenever a screening firm runs any part of the check, get the founder's written authorization first.

### The UK criminal offence data boundary

Under UK GDPR, criminal offence data covers "allegations, investigations or proceedings (even if no conviction results)." A criminal record check falls under Article 10 even when it turns up no convictions. Processing needs an Article 6 basis plus one of the 28 conditions in Schedule 1. The ICO is blunt about this: "if your purpose is not covered by any of the conditions, you cannot process the criminal offence data. It does not matter how good your reason for processing might be." It also says to determine and document your condition before processing begins.

I did not research EU member-state conditions. For founders in the EU, ask counsel before running anything.

> **Watch out:** Founder consent is not your UK lawful basis
>
> The ICO says that requiring someone's consent to a check "does not mean they can use that consent as their lawful basis." Name the Schedule 1 condition in the log, or do not run the criminal check.

If the fund has no data protection counsel who has handled investment-firm checks, [Refolk](/) can find one from a plain-English request such as "UK data protection lawyers advising investment firms on criminal offence data and DPIAs." That shortlist is worth having before your first UK founder diligence, not during it.

## Who should run the checks, and how scarce is the expertise?

The associate runs the degree, registry, license, and docket checks in-house. A screening firm or investigator handles employer confirmation when the fund cannot reach HR directly. Counsel signs off on step 1. The bottleneck is FCRA fluency, and it is rarer than the size of the investigator pool suggests.

In Refolk's index of professional profiles, the due-diligence and background-investigator title set looks like this:

| Market | Title matches | Sampled title precision | Noise-adjusted estimate |
|---|---|---|---|
| US | 2,885 | 56% (14 of 25) | ~1,616 |
| UK | 49 | 88% (22 of 25) | ~43 |
| US, FCRA listed as a skill | 2 | n/a | 0.07% of US matches |

The precision figures come from samples of 25, so treat them as indicative. The raw US to UK ratio is 58.9x, and about 37.6x once adjusted for title noise. The UK pool is small but mostly genuine. The US pool is large, but nearly half of it holds unrelated titles.

#### US diligence investigators, from title match to FCRA fluency

| Stage | Figure | Note |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Title matches | 2,885 | Due-diligence and background-investigator titles |
| Noise-adjusted estimate | ~1,616 | Applies the 56% sampled title precision |
| FCRA listed as a skill | 2 | Counted against the raw matches |

*Thousands of US profiles carry investigator titles, but only 2 list FCRA as a skill, which is why consent sign-off belongs with counsel.*

**2 - US profiles in the diligence-investigator title set that list FCRA as a skill**

That is out of 2,885 title matches in Refolk's index, so don't assume the screening firm you hire has the consent analysis covered.

When you need someone who does understand it, search for the skill rather than the title.

I ran this search: `US background investigators with FCRA compliance experience at background screening companies` - [see the full result list](https://www.refolk.ai/s/kt8qy5qvnh).

*Returns named investigators and screening-compliance staff with their profiles, so you can find the rare FCRA specialist before the consent decision instead of after it.*

### How deep to go at each stage

Practitioners disagree about criminal checks. Charles Hudson runs a criminal check "above a certain dollar threshold" on pre-seed deals. Kruze Consulting's checklist marks criminal and legal history "Maybe" at pre-seed and seed, and "Yes" at Series B and later. This standard uses a fixed floor plus a written threshold:

- **Every deal**: degree, license, prior-company registry, and public docket and regulator searches. They are cheap and fast, and they are where the documented fabrications were.
- **Above the fund's written threshold**: consumer-report-grade criminal checks, run through counsel's step 1 decision.

## The verification procedure, step by step

Run these seven steps in order on every founder named in the deck. Step 1 comes first because the UK rules require the lawful basis to be documented before any processing.

#### Founder bio verification, from consent to verdict

1. **Pre-clear jurisdiction and consent** - With counsel, log whether a consumer reporting agency will be involved, whether written authorization is on file, and the Schedule 1 condition for UK founders. Takes under an hour per deal.
2. **Get the founder's signed self-disclosure** - Send the disclosure request and ask whether the founder will submit to a background check. Done when a signed disclosure is on file.
3. **Extract material claims into the log** - Copy every material claim word for word from the deck, profiles, and data room, one row per claim, with source document and capture date.
4. **Map each claim to a primary-source class** - Name the required source class from the source table for every row before running any check.
5. **Run the checks** - Pull degree records, registries, license records, dockets, and employer confirmations, logging date, checker, and result. Degrees take from instant to 3 business days, and up to 2 weeks at peak.
6. **Grade each claim and request explanations** - Apply the materiality test, assign one of the four grades, and send every discrepancy to the founder in writing.
7. **Roll up the verdict and escalate** - Apply the roll-up rules to reach Clear, Clear With Context, or Escalate to IC, and have a partner sign the log.

A few notes on executing them:

- **Step 2** borrows Hudson's question: would any founder "be unwilling to submit to a background check if requested?" A refusal is itself information, and the roll-up rules below treat it that way.
- **Step 3** is where associates drift apart. A claim the memo relies on gets a row even if it appears only in a call note.
- **Step 5** timing for employers is a matter of days and is not verified. Start employer confirmation first, because it is the slowest.
- **Step 6** has no published standard format for founder explanations. Use the evidence log template below so every explanation is dated and attached to its row.

## How per-claim grades roll up to a verdict

The verdict follows mechanically from the grades. Escalate if any trigger below is present. If none is, the verdict is Clear With Context if anything is short of Verified, and Clear only if every material claim is Verified.

**Escalate to IC** if any of these is true:

- Any claim is graded Material Discrepancy.
- Identity is Unconfirmed.
- A litigation, regulatory, or enforcement record turns up that the founder did not disclose in step 2.
- The founder declines the disclosure, declines a check, or declines to explain a discrepancy.

**Clear With Context** if there is no escalation trigger and any of these is true:

- Any claim is graded Minor Discrepancy, and the founder's explanation is logged.
- Any claim is Unconfirmed after the required source class was tried and found unavailable, with the attempt logged.
- A proceeding exists, and the founder disclosed it in step 2.

**Clear** if every material claim is Verified.

#### Grading a discrepancy by effect and disclosure

Horizontal axis runs from Does not change what the claim proves to Changes what the claim proves. Vertical axis runs from Undisclosed to Disclosed and explained.

| Quadrant | What it means |
| --- | --- |
| Minor, disclosed | Clear With Context; attach the explanation to the row |
| Material, disclosed | Escalate to IC with the founder's explanation attached |
| Minor, undisclosed | Request an explanation; a refusal makes it Material |
| Material, undisclosed | Escalate to IC; this is the pattern the fraud cases share |

*Whether a discrepancy changes what the claim proves sets the grade, and whether the founder disclosed it decides how the verdict reads to IC.*

Unconfirmed does not mean false. It means the standard has not been met yet. An Unconfirmed claim the memo depends on should either be confirmed or be dropped from the memo before the verdict is signed.

## How founder verification goes wrong

Most failures are not a missed check. They happen when the wrong evidence is accepted as the right kind, or when a coverage gap is read as a lie. Each of the failure modes below appears in the public record.

1. **Attendance accepted as a degree.** In SEC v. Hicks, the defendant claimed Harvard degrees "when he had only enrolled there for a few semesters." An enrollment check passes this, and a degree check does not. *Check:* require a degree-conferred record.
2. **Profile accepted as the source.** Colangelo raised $3M for four startups and sent investors a LinkedIn profile listing a college he never attended. *Check:* grade Unconfirmed until a registrar or Clearinghouse record exists.
3. **Award treated as verification.** Thomas claimed a Fortune "Top 25" honour, and "no such distinction actually exists at Fortune Magazine." *Check:* confirm against the publisher's own list.
4. **No Clearinghouse match read as fraud.** Coverage gaps for international schools and community colleges, plus a pending queue covering 25% of requests, produce false negatives. *Check:* go to the registrar before grading. This is the false positive that sinks clean founders.
5. **Treating consent as the UK lawful basis.** Requiring a founder's consent does not let the fund rely on that consent under UK GDPR. *Check:* name the Schedule 1 condition in the step 1 log.
6. **Prior-exit claim accepted from the founder.** Dolfino, who raised about $20.6M, told investors he "had founded and sold a hedge fund, sold a pharmaceutical company." Neither sale happened. *Check:* registry records for the company and filings from the named acquirer.
7. **Over-indexing on education.** A prestigious degree draws attention while the real risk sits elsewhere. *Check:* size the effort to governance risk, as described below.

### What the fraud research says about where to look

The Venture Fraud paper by Dyck, Fang, Hebert and Xu studies 614 US VC-backed startups founded since 2000. The SSRN abstract says 654, so cite the version you read. It finds VC-backed firms 54% more likely to face fraud charges than comparable non-VC-backed firms. It also finds that, once governance is controlled for, "education, gender, and age do not predict fraud, whereas being a solo founder and prior founder experience have weak predictive effects." Governance predicts far better, and the effect sizes shift between versions of the paper:

| Metric | NBER w34868 | Earlier draft | Later draft |
|---|---|---|---|
| Founder-controlled board vs VC or shared | 2x | +88% | +90% |
| 10% lower investor ownership | +19% | +22% | +21% |
| One extra investor on cap table | +10% | +8.4% | n/a |
| Governance vs founder predictive power | n/a | 5.6x | 5.2x |

Two implications for this standard. First, a founder-controlled board is a reason to run the full depth, including the over-threshold criminal check. Second, the same paper finds no "significantly negative effect of fraud detection on fraudulent entrepreneurs' future founding activities." Reputation does not filter out repeat offenders, so search litigation and enforcement records for every prior company, not just the current one.

> A degree check costs less than lunch. The expensive failures are the claims nobody thought to check.

A caveat on how far the evidence goes. The documented credential fabrications (Colangelo, Hicks, Schoenberger, Dolfino) come from angel and retail raises, and the round each one got past is not publicly established. The VC-backed cases I found (Kalder at seed, ComplYant, YouPlus) involved false business metrics, not credentials. My inference is that institutional diligence already catches cheap credential checks. That makes credential verification a floor, not a substitute for checking the traction claims. A fake "Stripe alum, Stanford dropout" profile got its first offer from a venture fund within 24 hours, so the floor is not always in place.

## The evidence log and pre-term-sheet checklist

A partner should be able to audit any verdict from the log alone, without asking the associate anything. One row per claim, dated, with the source named and the result recorded.

**Founder claim evidence log (one block per claim)**

```
Deal:
Founder legal name (as disclosed), prior names:
Claim ID:
Claim, verbatim:
Claim type: identity | degree | employer and title | license | prior company and outcome | litigation and regulatory
Where claimed: deck page / profile / data room document, date captured
Required source class:
Source actually checked:
Date checked / checked by:
Result returned (summary and record reference):
Materiality test: does the difference change what the claim proves? yes / no / no difference
Grade: Verified | Minor Discrepancy | Material Discrepancy | Unconfirmed
Explanation requested (date) / received (date or "none"):
Explanation summary:
Roll-up trigger hit (if any):
Partner sign-off and date:
```

*Keep one log per founder; copy this block for each material claim and never leave Source checked blank.*

**Founder self-disclosure request**

```
Subject: Background confirmation before term sheet

Hi [Founder name],

Before I send a term sheet, I confirm the background of every founder against primary records. It is standard on every deal I do, not a signal about you.

Please send back, signed:
1. Your full legal name and any prior names.
2. Each degree: institution, degree type, field, and year conferred.
3. Each employer in your bio: company, title, and start and end dates.
4. Any professional license you hold or have held, with the issuing body.
5. Each company you founded or co-founded, and what happened to it.
6. Any litigation, regulatory, or enforcement proceeding involving you or a company you led, including any that are closed.

Separately: would you be willing to submit to a background check if requested? If a screening firm is involved, I will send a written authorization form first.

Thanks,
[Your name]
```

*Send at step 2, after counsel has cleared step 1; adjust the consent paragraph to match counsel's decision.*

#### Before the verdict is signed

- [ ] Counsel's step 1 decision is logged before the first search, including whether a CRA is involved and, for UK founders, the named Schedule 1 condition.
- [ ] A signed founder disclosure is on file listing all legal and prior names.
- [ ] Every material claim from the deck, profiles, data room, and memo has its own log row with source document and capture date.
- [ ] Every row names a primary-source class, and none names a deck, profile, press piece, or award list as the source checked.
- [ ] Every degree row rests on a degree-conferred record, not an enrollment record.
- [ ] Every Clearinghouse no-match was followed up with the registrar before the claim was graded.
- [ ] Every prior-exit claim was checked against a company registry and the acquirer's filings.
- [ ] Litigation and regulatory searches covered every prior company the founder led, not only the current one.
- [ ] Every discrepancy has a dated written request to the founder, with the response, or its absence, logged.
- [ ] The verdict follows from the roll-up rules without judgment calls, and a partner has signed the log.

## Keeping the standard current

The rules in this standard are stable. The facts it relies on are not. Re-check the items below on a fixed schedule, and record the date you last checked each one at the top of the policy document.

- **Degree check pricing and speed.** The $19.95 fee, the charge-only-if-confirmed rule, and the 75% instant rate all come from published Clearinghouse and partner pages. Re-read them before you rely on them in a budget.
- **Your own turnaround times.** Replace every "unverified" in this standard with your measured times for registries, dockets, licensing boards, and employer confirmation after your first few deals.
- **US consent guidance.** No FTC or CFPB guidance on FCRA and equity investment was found. If any appears, it overrides the written-consent default here.
- **UK conditions.** Re-read the ICO's criminal offence data pages when your UK deal flow grows. Schedule 1 is where the 28 conditions live.
- **The fraud research.** The Venture Fraud paper has moved between drafts, from 5.6x to 5.2x on the headline ratio and from 614 to 654 on the sample. Cite the version you read, by name.
- **Grader agreement.** Once a quarter, have a second associate regrade one completed log without seeing the first set of grades. Any disagreement points to a gap in the materiality test or the source table, so fix the policy rather than the person.
- **Follow-on rounds.** Because fraudulent founders keep founding, re-run docket and regulator searches before you lead or join a follow-on round, even when the original verdict was Clear.

A standard that two people apply differently is just two opinions. Keep the definitions written down, the log complete, and the re-checks dated, so the grade depends on the policy and not on who ran the check.

## Frequently asked questions

### How do I verify a founder's degree before investing?

Run a degree verification through the National Student Clearinghouse, which confirms degree type, major and graduation date when it finds a match. It costs $19.95, confirms 75% of requests instantly, and is only charged if the degree is confirmed. Do not use the cheaper enrollment check, because it proves attendance, not completion. For international schools, community colleges, or a no-match result, go straight to the school's registrar before you grade the claim.

### Do investors need consent for a founder background check?

If the fund pulls public records itself, consumer-report consent rules probably do not apply. That reading comes from the FCRA definition, though, not from any ruling about investors. Once a screening firm compiles a report on a founder, get written authorization: one court found no permissible purpose to pull a report on a corporate principal based on dealings with the company. In the UK, criminal record checks need a documented Schedule 1 condition, and the founder's consent does not count as one.

### Is a LinkedIn profile enough to verify a founder's employment history?

No. A profile is self-supplied, so it is the claim, not the evidence. In SEC v. Colangelo, the defendant emailed investors a link to his LinkedIn profile, which listed a college he never attended. Grade employment claims Unconfirmed until the employer's HR team or a third-party employment confirmation backs them up. No public registry of employment exists, so the employer is the only primary source.

### What should I do if the Clearinghouse returns no match for a founder's degree?

Treat the claim as Unconfirmed, not false, and contact the registrar before you grade it. The Clearinghouse does not cover all community colleges or international institutions, and 25% of requests go into a pending queue for 1 to 3 business days, or up to two weeks at peak. Grading a coverage gap as Material Discrepancy is a false positive, and it can sink a clean founder.

### How deep should a founder background check go at seed versus later rounds?

Run degree, registry, license and public docket checks on every deal, because they are cheap and come back fast. Practitioners disagree about criminal checks. One pre-seed investor runs them above a dollar threshold, and one widely used checklist marks criminal and legal history optional at pre-seed and seed but required at Series B and later. Set your threshold in writing, and scale depth to governance risk, such as a founder-controlled board.

### What counts as a material discrepancy in a founder's bio?

No published threshold exists, so a fund has to set one as policy. This standard uses one test: does the difference change what the claim was used to prove? A degree that was never conferred, a lower seniority level than claimed, an exit that never happened, a lapsed or disciplined license, and an undisclosed proceeding are all material. A renamed major or shifted dates that leave the sequence of roles intact are minor.

---

*From the Refolk guide library. I revise these guides rather than replacing them, so the current version is always at https://www.refolk.ai/guides/founder-bio-verification-standard*