The diligence standard
Work backward from the hardest room you'll ever open.
Diligence isn't random. At every US venture stage — pre-seed, seed, Series A, Series B, growth — investors check a fixed slice of the same institutional bar, and each round adds the next layer. This page shows the exact slice per round and what changes at the next one. It's rendered from the same engine that scores your report, so this page and your paid report can never disagree.
Rubric and room structure generalized from institutional rooms behind a company IPO and $50M+ of financings, mapped to US diligence norms (YC, a16z, Cooley GO, Kruze).
Growth & pre-IPO — the terminal bar
The room every earlier stage is a fraction of. This is confirmatory, institution-grade diligence — what a growth/crossover lead (and eventually an S-1) actually demands. Drawn from running a real public-company listing and $50M+ of financings:
Financial & business defense
- An operating model that survives an analyst rebuild — ours was iterated through 7+ versions with per-product-line margin builds, not a single hockey stick
- Quality-of-Earnings-grade financials: revenue recognition, cohort economics, concentration — reconciled to the bank
- Market-share claims you can defend in writing against a cited third-party report (Gartner/IDC/McKinsey-tier), not your own estimate
- Material-contracts package: top customers & vendors, redacted as needed
Technical, security & governance
- Third-party technical & security diligence: SOC 2, penetration test, code/architecture audit — the US equivalent of a formal tech assessment
- Head-to-head technical comparison vs named competitors, written for a skeptical expert reader
- Management presentation + reference-call prep (the customer calls that verify your pitch)
- The banker-led roadshow deck, versioned separately from the diligence room
The point of this page: every earlier stage above is a slice of this bar. Build each round's slice properly and the terminal room assembles itself — that's the discipline the report's data room blueprint installs from day one.
See your own slice — free, on the homepage.
Tick the 25-item checker; the report turns your gaps into a work order, researched sections, and your data room blueprint.
Run the free readiness check