Most diligence is written
to be filed.
Ours is written to be acted on. Independent commercial, technical and operational due diligence for funders, investors, corporates and business owners, followed by the transaction support to get the deal done. And where the diligence finds a gap, we can put someone in it.
Half of all diligence never becomes a plan.
Research on transactions is consistent and uncomfortable. Around half the time, the diligence carried out before a deal fails to give the buyer a usable roadmap for capturing the value they just paid for. The report informs a decision and is then filed.
The consequences show up later, in the first ninety days, when nobody can remember what the data room actually revealed and the people who read it have moved on to another mandate.
We write diligence as an execution document. What is true, what is at risk, what must happen first, and who does it. Then we stay for that part.
Every startup curve ends at the acquisition.
Real ones do not.
There is a well known chart, drawn first by Paul Graham, of the emotional path a founder walks: uninformed optimism, a crash, a long trough, and finally the promised land of an acquisition. It is usually drawn ending there, at the top, at the deal. As though the story is over the moment the wire transfer clears.
It is not over. It is just that nobody is watching any more.
Four buyers, one standard of evidence.
Independent assessment of applicants and investees for state agencies, development finance institutions and grant funders. Technical readiness, commercialisation risk, management capability and the evidence behind the claim. Reporting built to survive an audit rather than to satisfy a committee.
Buy-side commercial and operational diligence on targets, and portfolio reviews on assets already held. We tell you what the founders have not, and we are direct about which risks are priced and which are not.
Diligence on acquisitions and internal ventures, with the group standard applied honestly. Often the useful finding is that the target runs on one person, which is a valuation question rather than a footnote.
Buy-side diligence for owners acquiring a competitor or a supplier, and vendor diligence for owners preparing to sell who would rather find the problems before the buyer does.
Four stages, and the last one is the point.
Before any data room opens, we agree which findings would actually alter the price, the structure or the answer. Diligence scoped to cover everything covers nothing well and costs more.
Produces · A scoped question listRaw data rather than management packs. Customers rather than references. The distinction between what we were told and what we saw is recorded explicitly throughout, because that distinction is the report.
Produces · Verified findings, sourcedEvery material finding carries a consequence and an action: renegotiate, structure around it, fix it in the first ninety days, or walk. A risk without an owner and a date is an observation, not a finding.
Produces · A first ninety days planWhere the diligence exposes a capability the business does not have, we can place a fractional operator to hold it while a permanent hire is found. This is the part almost nobody offers, and it is where the value actually lands.
Produces · A named person, with a mandateWhat we cover, and what we do not.
We are deliberate about the boundary. Being clear about what we do not do is what makes the rest credible.
Commercial and market diligence. Technical and technology readiness, including commercialisation risk. Operational diligence. Management and key person assessment. Customer and revenue verification. Integration and first ninety days planning.
Statutory audit, legal opinions or tax structuring. We work alongside your auditors and attorneys rather than pretending to replace them, and we will say so in the first meeting rather than the third.
For funders running many decisions at once.
A single diligence report answers one question. A funder makes hundreds of decisions a year and has to defend all of them later, often to someone who was not in the room. The Decision Ledger is how those decisions stay traceable.
What this programme or fund may decide, with whose money, and who can overrule it. Vagueness here is why decisions get relitigated two years later.
One written standard applied to every applicant, agreed before the applications arrive. A standard written afterwards is a justification, not a standard.
Every decision recorded with the evidence under it, who made it, and when it is revisited. This is what an auditor, a board or a public accounts committee will ask for.
Decisions tested against what actually happened, so the criteria improve rather than simply persist. Very few funders ever check whether their gate was predictive.
Four ways to use us.
A fast read on whether a target or an applicant is worth full diligence. Fixed fee, short turnaround, and a written answer that is allowed to be no.
Scoped to the questions that would change the decision, delivered as findings plus a first ninety days plan rather than as a document.
Alongside your corporate finance adviser and attorneys, from diligence through to completion, so that what was found in the data room actually reaches the agreement.
Ongoing diligence capacity for a fund, a programme or a funder with continuous deal flow, including panel appointments.