Where RAG ends and FME begins in first-pass review
Timur here — founder of Grizzz.ai.
One question comes up quickly when people hear that we use more than one layer in the workflow:
Why do you need both?
The shortest useful answer is that retrieval and evaluation do different jobs.
RAG helps the system gather and organize relevant context.
FME helps the workflow evaluate the startup through a repeatable decision frame.
Those are not interchangeable.
If you only have retrieval, you can collect a lot of useful material without making the judgment structure much clearer.
If you only have an evaluation schema, you risk forcing a conclusion without enough grounded context behind it.
That is why I think the boundary matters.
RAG is not the verdict layer.
FME is not the context layer.
The first helps the workflow see more of the case.
The second helps the workflow judge the case more consistently.
That distinction also makes the workflow easier to debug.
If the output feels weak, the right next question is not just “did the AI fail?”
It is:
did retrieval miss the relevant context,
or did the evaluation frame fail to use the context well once it was there?
In first-pass review, both matter because investors do not only need more information. They need a better frame for deciding what to do with it.
That is the practical distinction:
retrieval broadens the evidence surface,
structured evaluation shapes the decision surface.
When those two are collapsed into one vague “AI analysis” story, the workflow sounds simpler than it really is.
When the boundary is clear, the output becomes easier to trust.
You can ask better questions:
Is the context weak, or is the evaluation weak?
Are we missing evidence, or are we misreading evidence?
Is the judgment unstable because the retrieval is thin, or because the framework is inconsistent?
That clarity matters much more than the stack diagram.
For a fund, the useful outcome is not “two models.” It is a workflow where context gathering and structured judgment are doing the jobs they are actually good at.
Grizzz is diligence infrastructure that compounds as more deals move through the same workflow.