Technology Due Diligence

Why technical due diligence matters

Technology companies are bought and sold on the premise that the technology is an asset. It often isn’t. What looks like a well-engineered platform from the outside can be a fragile system that only two engineers understand, running on infrastructure that’s one incident away from a multi-day outage.

Good technical due diligence tells you the true state of the technology before you close the deal — not after.

What I assess

Architecture and scalability — Is the system built to scale with the business, or are there fundamental limitations that will require significant rearchitecting? What’s the cost of growth?

Codebase quality — Not just “is the code clean” but: can new engineers be productive quickly? Is there meaningful test coverage? Are there obvious security vulnerabilities? What’s the actual technical debt burden?

Engineering team — Who are the key people? What happens if two specific engineers leave? Is the team capable of executing the roadmap, or is there a significant hiring/training gap?

Infrastructure and operations — How mature is the deployment, monitoring, and incident response practice? What does reliability look like in practice?

Security and compliance — For regulated industries: are the right controls in place? For any company: are there obvious risks that could become liabilities?

Roadmap credibility — Is the product roadmap achievable with the current team and architecture? What are the real dependencies and risks?

Deliverable

A written report covering: executive summary, risk ratings by category (red/amber/green), detailed findings, and recommended deal terms or conditions. Length: 20–40 pages depending on company complexity.

Timeline: 2–4 weeks from kickoff to final report.

Contact me to discuss a due diligence engagement.