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Consult · Technical due diligence

Find out what you’re buying before you own it.

Technical due diligence for investors, acquirers and founders preparing for either. I’ve raised equity for products I built, so I’ve sat on the founder’s side of this conversation.

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What a due diligence review covers

Funds call it technology due diligence, tech due diligence or IT due diligence. Same job: telling somebody about to pay for technology what it’s worth.

The report is written for the person signing, and their question is commercial. Does the technology support the price, what will it cost to keep, and what would stop it growing the way the plan says?

I read the code, the architecture, the infrastructure and how the team ships. The hour with the people who built it is the part I’d least want to skip, and it’s the hour that tells me whether the documentation matches the system or somebody wrote it the week the data room opened. How technical due diligence works sets out the rest of the method.

It’s a bounded review. We agree the days before it starts, at £1,000 a day.

  • Pre-investment and pre-acquisition review
  • Codebase, architecture and infrastructure
  • The team, and who the system depends on
  • Security and data handling
  • What it will cost to keep

Typical work

What this looks like in practice

Before an investment

Whether the product is what the deck says it is, whether the team that built it can build the next eighteen months of it, and what in the technology would change the price if you knew about it now.

Before an acquisition

What you’d own on day one, what it depends on, and what walks out of the door if two named people leave.

Before your own raise

The same review, run for you first, so you get the list while there’s still time to work through it.

An agency or outsourced team

Whether you could take it elsewhere.

Security and compliance

ISO 9001, 14001 and 27001, implemented in 2021 in a business I owned.

What it will cost to keep

Running cost, the maintenance nobody budgeted for, and the parts that will need replacing inside the investment horizon.

Where it starts

The Leverage Diagnostic.
Two weeks, fixed, £7,500.

All prices exclude VAT.

Due diligence answers a question about somebody else’s system, and it’s billed by the day. The diagnostic is for your own business, when the question is what is costing you and what would fix it. For a look at your own systems, see the software audit.

How the two weeks work Ask about a review

Questions

The things people ask first

What does technical due diligence cost?

£1,000 a day, with the days agreed before the review starts, so you know the total before you commit. All prices exclude VAT.

Who is the report written for?

The person deciding. The first page says what I think; the rest is there for whoever needs to check it.

Can you work inside a deal timetable?

Yes, provided access arrives when promised. The review needs the repository, the infrastructure and an hour each with the people who built it. Where access is restricted, the report says what couldn’t be seen.

I am the founder. Should I run this on my own company first?

If you’re raising or selling within the year, yes. I’d rather you heard about a gap from me than from their adviser.

Will you build the fixes afterwards?

For a founder, yes, if you want that. For an investor or acquirer the review stays independent, so I’m not assessing a system with one eye on the repair contract.

From Insights

What I’ve written about this

Due Diligence 4 min read

What belongs in a technical due diligence report

A technical due diligence report is for the person signing. What the first page has to say, the seven questions behind it, how a finding should read, and what to distrust in a report you've been handed.

Read it

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