Six pillars. Six kinds of evidence. No generic checklist.
Due diligence should tell you what's actually true about a business, not what a generic checklist says to look for. Our framework is built on proprietary methodology and applied through six pillars, each examined in depth and each resting on its own kind of evidence. For SMEs, that means knowing exactly what will be examined before capital moves. For investors, it means an evaluation shaped by your investment thesis.
The six pillars stay constant. How we weight them doesn't. Sector, scale and maturity all shape where the risk actually sits, so each evaluation is calibrated to the business in front of us, not applied from a template.
Business Model · Economics · Operations
Every evaluation starts here. We look at how the business actually makes money, such as the model, the unit economics, and the operational depth behind the numbers, because a due diligence process that skips this ends up assessing a business that doesn't exist on paper. Company sits at the centre of our framework because everything else is read through it.
Evidence: the business's actual operating model and unit economics, not the pitch narrative.
People make or break execution. We assess leadership depth, succession readiness, and how dependent day-to-day operations are on any single individual, because a business that only runs with its owner in the room carries a risk the balance sheet won't show.
Evidence: a behavioural assessment grounded in doctoral research published by Routledge.
Beyond whether the numbers are good, we look at whether they're built to last. That means EBITDA quality and margin trends benchmarked against sector peers, customer concentration, and how quickly revenue actually converts to cash: the difference between a business that earns and one that merely bills.
Evidence: authentic bookkeeping data, not presented accounts.
We assess the systems a business runs on: what's current, what's ageing, what quietly needs replacing. Technology debt is one of the easiest risks to overlook in due diligence, and one of the most expensive to inherit.
Evidence: a direct review of the systems the business runs on.
Contracts, licences, disputes, and regulatory exposure, reviewed for what they mean in practice, not just what they say on paper. We flag what needs resolving before capital changes hands, not after.
Evidence: reviewed by qualified compliance officers.
We size the addressable market, competitive position, and durability of demand, grounded in evidence, not projection. A strong business in a shrinking market carries a different risk profile to a strong business in a growing one.
Evidence: market and competitor data, not management projections.
For investors: when due diligence points to a deal, the Data Room takes it through to close.See the Data Room →
