Making scalability legible: how founders and investors can reduce interpretive asymmetry

Purpose This article contributes to The Practice of Making Decisions by helping founders and investors judge scalability under uncertainty and time pressure. Drawing on 198 pitch videos and 15 investor interviews, it examines which scalability signals to communicate, which evidence to prioritize and how investors interpret them, using interpretive asymmetry as the analytical lens. Design/methodology/approach An abductive qualitative design compares finalist pitches from eight editions of a national startup competition spanning 2014–2022 with investor interviews. The sources are complementary and unmatched. Cross-source comparison identifies patterns consistent with interpretive asymmetry, which inform the decision guidance. Findings The patterns suggest three mechanisms through which founder and investor judgments diverge. Semantic misalignment occurs when investors read market ambition as a lack of focus. Credibility discounting follows unvalidated technical claims, and contextual mismatch arises when signals suit a different evaluative context, such as friction-blind scale plans. Signal bundling connects market, technological, operational and credibility cues into coherent bundles that make claims more legible. Practical implications Four instruments are used in sequence. The scalability signal stress test diagnoses claims, the Wedge Ladder focuses market logic, the Friction Register anticipates constraints and the Signal Bundling Canvas with its Evidence Architecture connects claims to validation and economic metrics. Investors' questions then guide post-pitch revisions. Originality/value The meaning of a scalability signal depends on its receiver and can shift under the uncertainty and time pressure of a live pitch. The article gives founders and investors guidance grounded in pitch and interview data.