TabsScore (TabsSuite)

Unat Bak, a non-technical serial entrepreneur, identified a pain point in the venture capital and investment world: the inability to conduct rigorous, quantitative due diligence at scale. Traditional tools were offering surface-level metrics (follower counts, basic company data), but sophisticated investors needed deeper analysis of founder experience, business lifecycle positioning, and market fit. Bak saw an opportunity to apply machine learning and AI to transform qualitative assessments into quantitative metrics that could accelerate the diligence process.

Working as an Entrepreneur in Residence at a fund, Bak received $500K in direct capitalization to build TabsSuite starting in October 2019. The first iteration was crude—literally an Excel macro running on a single computer that took an hour to generate reports and would crash if anyone breathed near it. Despite the technical limitations, Bak partnered with an experienced development team based in India and Singapore (later 7 developers strong) and began designing in Figma, creating a rapid iteration cycle: he'd design and suggest changes during the day while they built overnight, then refine based on their output the next morning.

The official launch came in January 2020, just as the world was shifting to remote work and digital-first processes.

The first customer arrived in March 2020—serendipitously, one of the investors who had declined the tool earlier now desperately needed it for remote due diligence during COVID lockdowns. He paid $1,000 via check handed over a restaurant table. This early win validated the concept, but Bak realized the manual backend was unsustainable. This prompted the shift to building out the ML/AI system that would become the platform's core.

Growth came primarily through direct enterprise sales. Bak's team spoke directly with potential customers—angel investors, angel funds, micro VCs, large VCs, SBA lenders, and government organizations. The product's complexity and high-touch nature meant each sale required multiple demos and customization. By the time of acquisition, TabsSuite had approximately 70 customers who had spent at least $1 in the past 12 months.

The SaaS model evolved through experimentation. Bak tested percentage-of-AUM pricing, percentage-of-deployed-funds pricing, flat SaaS fees, block-based assessment pricing, per-assessment pricing, and even opening it to founders (which failed, forcing a pivot back to B2B and eventually B2B-to-Enterprise). The winning model combined tiered SaaS subscriptions ($500-$1,000+ monthly for most customers, with large enterprise agreements at $30K-$50K annually) plus a lucrative consulting side.

Interestingly, the consulting business became almost as valuable as the core SaaS. When assessments identified gaps—"this company needs legal help, financial help"—Bak would match those companies with relevant service providers, earning $30K-$50K consulting fees per transaction. This created a hub-and-spoke model where large customers like an SBA lender would sign for one custom deployment, then immediately add 10-14 additional silos at the same $30K annual rate.

One customer (the SBA lender) continued passively generating 3-4 assessment requests per day even after turning off promotional funnels—a testament to product-market fit. By 2021, the company was generating revenue across both SaaS and consulting channels, though it hadn't yet crossed $1M in trailing 12-month revenue before the exit.

With a $20.8M acquisition by Pre-IPO (slightly reduced from initial MOU, with $5M in immediate cash and the rest in equity, earnouts, and stock in Pre-IPO), Bak and his team joined Pre-IPO to scale TabsSuite into their broader securities diligence suite. Pre-IPO, itself well-funded (halfway through an $8.75M seed round, with a $25M round closing shortly after, plus access to a multi-hundred-million-dollar credit facility), provided the capital and resources Bak couldn't access through pure bootstrapping.

The deal was structured as both an acquisition and an aqua-hire—Pre-IPO valued not just the proprietary ML/AI IP but the team itself and the validation from large enterprise customers who explicitly stated they'd immediately deploy additional solutions once integrated. Bak retained equity upside in Pre-IPO, and the partnership unfroze the sales pipeline he had paused during acquisition discussions. At 28 years old, recently engaged, and now building within a better-capitalized organization, Bak is positioned to expand TabsSuite into a centerpiece of Pre-IPO's enterprise offering.