Three engagement shapes
Technical due diligence — two to four weeks
A senior read on a target's architecture, codebase quality, team depth, technical debt, security posture, and key-person risk. Deliverable: a written memo for the investment committee — usually 12–20 pages — plus a 60-minute walkthrough call. We size the engagement to the deal: a Series A check gets a different read than a strategic acquisition.
AI roadmap reads — one to three weeks
An honest assessment of a portfolio company's AI strategy or proposed AI investment. What's real, what's theatre, what would actually move the metric. We've evaluated [N]+ AI features during discoveries; about a third of them shouldn't have been built. We tell you which side of that line a roadmap sits on.
Fractional / interim CTO — retainer
Two to four days a month for ongoing coverage; or full-time interim during a transition (fundraise, replatform, leadership gap). Senior judgement at the senior end of the rate card. We don't accept retainers where we can't add real value — we'll tell you if the fit isn't right.
Technical due diligence — two to four weeks
A senior read on a target's architecture, codebase quality, team depth, technical debt, security posture, and key-person risk. Deliverable: a written memo for the investment committee — usually 12–20 pages — plus a 60-minute walkthrough call. We size the engagement to the deal: a Series A check gets a different read than a strategic acquisition.
AI roadmap reads — one to three weeks
An honest assessment of a portfolio company's AI strategy or proposed AI investment. What's real, what's theatre, what would actually move the metric. We've evaluated [N]+ AI features during discoveries; about a third of them shouldn't have been built. We tell you which side of that line a roadmap sits on.
Fractional / interim CTO — retainer
Two to four days a month for ongoing coverage; or full-time interim during a transition (fundraise, replatform, leadership gap). Senior judgement at the senior end of the rate card. We don't accept retainers where we can't add real value — we'll tell you if the fit isn't right.
How we read a technical target
Code, but also the team that wrote it
Static analysis only tells you so much.
The harder questions are about the team — who actually carries the architecture in their head, what happens if two people leave, whether the engineering culture rewards shortcuts that compound into outages a year later. We talk to the team, read the commit history, and form an opinion.
Code, but also the team that wrote it
What would it take to scale this 10x — and what would break
Most diligence reports flag the obvious technical debt.
The interesting question is which bottlenecks will hit at the next phase of growth, and whether the current architecture survives 10x more users / data / transactions. We model that.
What would it take to scale this 10x — and what would break
Compliance, security, and key-person risk
Audit trails, data residency, secrets management, on-call ownership.
The questions an acquirer's risk committee will ask six months in — we ask them now, while you can still walk away.
Compliance, security, and key-person risk
Honest assessment, not a rubber stamp
We'll tell you when a target is more fragile than it looks.
We'll also tell you when it's better than the founders made it sound. The point of bringing us in is to get a read you can defend in front of your investment committee — flattery or pessimism are equally unhelpful.
Honest assessment, not a rubber stamp
Code, but also the team that wrote it
Static analysis only tells you so much.
The harder questions are about the team — who actually carries the architecture in their head, what happens if two people leave, whether the engineering culture rewards shortcuts that compound into outages a year later. We talk to the team, read the commit history, and form an opinion.
Code, but also the team that wrote it
What would it take to scale this 10x — and what would break
Most diligence reports flag the obvious technical debt.
The interesting question is which bottlenecks will hit at the next phase of growth, and whether the current architecture survives 10x more users / data / transactions. We model that.
What would it take to scale this 10x — and what would break
Compliance, security, and key-person risk
Audit trails, data residency, secrets management, on-call ownership.
The questions an acquirer's risk committee will ask six months in — we ask them now, while you can still walk away.
Compliance, security, and key-person risk
Honest assessment, not a rubber stamp
We'll tell you when a target is more fragile than it looks.
We'll also tell you when it's better than the founders made it sound. The point of bringing us in is to get a read you can defend in front of your investment committee — flattery or pessimism are equally unhelpful.
Honest assessment, not a rubber stamp
What you're hiring
Questions investors usually ask
If yours isn't here, the answer is probably "depends on the deal" — and we'd rather have a call than guess.
Bring us the deal you need read.
Quick scoping call, written memo, hand-off you can defend in front of the investment committee. We respond within one working day.