Due Diligence
Technical Due Diligence Financial Due Diligence Freedom to Operate Founding Team & Go-To-MarketBuilding & Leadership
Venture Building Mentor-Coaching Private PlacementsTwo questions decide most deep-tech outcomes: will anyone buy this — at the price assumed, in the quantity modelled — and is this the team to build it? We answer both: investment-grade validation of the revenue side of the thesis, and a rigorous read on the people behind it.
Go-to-market diligence tests one thing above all: whether anyone will buy the product, at the price assumed, in the quantity modelled.
It is not market research, and it is not strategy work — it is investment-grade validation of the revenue side of the deal thesis. Done well, it changes the price, the structure, or the decision to proceed.
Who diligence tests the other half: the character and capacity of the founding team. In deep tech, outcomes live or die on whether the people can carry the magnitude of the project.
So we measure problem-founder fit, context-solution fit, and whether the team's capability genuinely matches the scale of what they are attempting — before capital is committed.
Six evidence-driven lenses that separate a buildable market from a modelled one.
Built bottom-up, not from analyst reports. TAM is total addressable demand; SAM the segment realistically served; SOM the share capturable in 3–5 years. Analyst TAM is a sanity check, never the headline number.
Direct and adjacent competitors, well-funded emerging entrants, and real defensibility: distribution, network effects, switching cost, regulatory moat, data advantage — and whether prices can rise without losing volume.
15–30 interviews with current, lost, and prospective customers; willingness-to-pay testing; switching-cost and anchor-customer concentration. Direct customer evidence is the single most predictive input.
Recurring vs one-off split, gross and net cohort retention, pipeline coverage against the forecast, sales-cycle length, and discounting trend — often the earliest sign of competitive pressure.
Price benchmarking against direct and adjacent players, gross margin per unit and per cohort, CAC and CAC payback, LTV/CAC by channel and segment, and contribution-margin sensitivity to volume.
Channel mix and its defensibility, sales-team productivity and ramp, marketing efficiency across paid, organic, and brand, and genuine international-expansion readiness.
The market can be real and the science elegant, and the venture can still fail on the people. We read the team as rigorously as the numbers.
Integrity, resilience, and coachability. How the founders behave under pressure, how they handle bad news, and whether they build trust with the people around them.
Whether this founder has the lived insight, access, and conviction that make them the right person to solve this specific problem — not a capable operator in search of one.
Whether the proposed solution is the right answer for this market and this moment, or a technology looking for a problem. We separate scientific elegance from commercial reality.
Whether the team's capability, bandwidth, and track record match the scale of what the project demands — where the gaps are, and whether they are fixable with hiring, partners, or structure.
Deep tech is where this diligence earns its keep: the science can be real while the commercial and human risk is at its highest. That gap is exactly what Go-to-Market and Who diligence close.
Pre-seed through early growth — where a wrong read on the market or the team is most expensive to discover late.
Science- and technology-backed companies: deep tech, not consumer trends. Deep tech is the domain where diligence changes the decision.
We back theses that survive direct customer evidence and a hard look at the team — not decks and top-down TAM.
A market that can be built, and a team with the capacity to build it. Both, or we say so plainly.
We maintain active collaborations with a global network of over 50 independent PhD specialists. We deploy them on demand, tailored to each mandate, with active contributors across four key geographic hubs.
Included in your engagement — 100% refundable when you retain the service.
Scoped per engagement based on stage, market complexity, and interview volume.
Every engagement is scoped following the Discovery Call. Customer interviews and management calls remain human-led.
That the revenue side of the thesis is real — the market exists, customers will pay, and the forecast is achievable — and that the founding team has the character and capacity to deliver it. It is investment-grade validation of both the demand and the people, not abstract market analysis.
Market research is general and reusable. This diligence is deal-specific and hypothesis-driven: it tests whether this company will reach this revenue because of a defensible position and a capable team, rather than describing a market in the abstract.
A structured read of the founding team: problem-founder fit, context-solution fit, team character under pressure, and whether their capability matches the magnitude of the project. In deep tech, the team is often the decisive variable, so we evaluate it as rigorously as the numbers.
Deep tech is where it earns its keep, because market dynamics are least obvious and the team risk is highest. It is scoped to cheque size and stage: lighter for early rounds, deeper for later ones and for M&A where customer overlap and cannibalization matter.
Like all our engagements: with a 30-minute Discovery Call. We assess the transaction, the asset, and the scope before defining the exact work and timeline.
Good diligence doesn't confirm the deal. It changes the price, the structure, or the decision to proceed.
Begin with a 30-minute Discovery Call. We will scope your transaction, asset, or venture and define the exact work before moving forward. $275 USD · credited toward any retained service.
Book Discovery Call →