Technical Due Diligence: How to Prepare Your Startup for Investors

As startups raise larger rounds or approach acquisition, investors increasingly commission technical due diligence. A smooth review builds confidence; surprises can delay or derail a deal.

What investors look at

Architecture and scalability

Can the system handle growth without a rewrite? Are there obvious bottlenecks or single points of failure?

Code quality

Is the code maintainable, tested and documented? How much technical debt exists, and is there a plan for it?

Security

Authentication, access control, encryption, dependency management, incident history and compliance status.

Intellectual property

Do you own your code? Are all contributors — employees, freelancers and agencies — covered by IP assignment? Are open-source licences respected?

Infrastructure and costs

Cloud setup, reliability, backups, disaster recovery and whether costs scale sensibly with usage.

Team and process

Who knows what? How are releases made? Is there key-person risk?

AI use

If AI is core to your product, expect questions about models, data rights, evaluation, costs and dependency on third-party providers.

Preparation checklist

1. Confirm all IP assignment agreements are signed
2. Ensure code, cloud and app store accounts are in the company's name
3. Document architecture with a simple diagram and description
4. Produce an open-source licence inventory
5. Run a security scan and fix critical issues
6. Document backup and recovery procedures — and test them
7. Summarise known technical debt and your plan
8. Prepare cost and usage metrics

If an agency built your product

Make sure you have full repository access, documentation and the ability to continue without them.

Need a pre-diligence review?

We run independent technical reviews for founders before fundraising, with a prioritised fix list. See our product re-engineering and MVP development services.