I’ve done due diligence from both sides of the table, as the founder being assessed and as the consultant doing the assessing. My biggest single finding was around £2m.
Technical due diligence is an independent review of a company’s technology before money changes hands. It assesses the architecture, codebase, security, and the team behind it. Investors and acquirers typically commission it after a term sheet has been agreed but before the deal completes.
Founders often commission it ahead of a funding round to identify and fix issues before investors uncover them.
Also offered as: software due diligence · code due diligence · tech due diligence.
3 situations bring people here. Under each, where I’ve done it before.
The commercial terms are agreed, the deal is moving forward, but one big question remains: is the technology actually worth what you’re paying for?
A technical due diligence review gives you an independent assessment of the codebase, architecture, security, and engineering team. It highlights hidden costs, key-person dependencies, technical debt, and any expensive rebuilds waiting around the corner. On startup technical due diligence, where the codebase is young, the weight shifts to key-person risk and the architecture choices the company will have to live with.
Technical due diligence on multi-million-pound operationsSooner or later, investors will ask difficult technical questions. Who wrote the core platform? Who owns the IP? Can the technology actually support the growth projections?
Running the review before fundraising gives you the chance to fix issues, prepare evidence, and answer those questions with confidence.
Raised £450k+ as a founder · £50k in 2 weeks at a £1.25m valuationPerhaps you’ve outsourced development, possibly overseas, and months of work have gone into building the product. You’re paying the invoices, but you have no easy way to judge the quality of what’s being delivered.
An independent review tells you whether the code is maintainable, whether you genuinely own what you’ve paid for, and whether you’re getting value for money. If the product was largely built with AI tools, start at the AI code audit & rescue.
Assessed the ~30-person dev partner behind the McDonald’s app · ~£2m found (R/GA)The review looks at six areas, each tied to a way deals tend to go wrong.
In full, so you can use it with or without me: run your own review, brief another consultant, or prepare to be assessed.
The report works through the checklist line by line. Every problem it finds comes with two things: how serious it is, and what it will cost to fix.
It’s written for two audiences. The executive summary is in plain English, for the people signing the cheque. The technical appendix carries the evidence, for the engineering team who’ll act on it.
The part that moves valuations is the remediation roadmap: what to fix, in what order, and what each fix will cost.
How long does it take? A seed-stage review usually runs one to three weeks. A complex, multi-system target can run to eight.
UK fixed fees, as published by providers, scale with deal value:
Infrastructure and code review.
Full architecture and delivery analysis.
End-to-end review of complex targets.
The heuristic acquiring boards use. Senior day rates: £800 to £1,600.
Fixed fee per deal, in writing before we start. 3 things move the number: the size of the deal, the size of the system, and the deadline. Send all 3 and I’ll quote fee and timeline.
A technical review has a bad name for a reason: it’s usually run by an agency hoping to win the rebuild, so the findings can skew towards more work for them. This one is independent.
An agency’s review quietly skips two questions: whether the deal still makes sense, and who should fix what it finds. Here, both stay open.
The report is yours to take to any engineering team — including one I source. If you do ask me to handle the remediation, the audit fee credits against that work in full. The findings are the findings: they don’t change based on who fixes them. And if what the deal needs afterwards is ongoing technical leadership rather than a one-off fix, that’s a fractional CTO engagement.
On access: I sign an NDA before anything is shared, work with read-only credentials, and do supervised walkthroughs wherever the company prefers them. The findings go to whoever commissioned the review — and no one else.
Companies with nothing built yet — no code means nothing to review. If you’re pre-build and want the feasibility, architecture and cost on paper first, that’s the venture readiness audit. And it’s not for anyone after a certificate that says everything is fine.
3 engagements that map to the situations above.
Assessed the ~30-person development partner behind the global Happy Meal app: performance, processes, commercials. Found ~£2m in potential annual savings inside a 3-month contract.
R/GA answered with the offer of a permanent role heading the functionInherited an overdue programme on NEOM’s B2B digital-twin platform. Diagnosed team, delivery, architecture and platform; presented recommendations to the CEO and board.
Dependable delivery restored across a distributed international teamCut development cost 40% through architecture and process redesign on a JP Morgan / Contex-City engagement.
Delivered through the consultancy I founded and staffedThat consultancy ran technical due diligence on multi-million-pound operations and delivered for JP Morgan, HP, IBM, McDonald’s and EE. As a founder I raised £450k+, and I wound down Immersive Medical, my VR telemedicine company, when its NHS sponsor moved on and the funding ended. Full record: the work · the validation.
Tell me the company, the deal stage and your deadline — two or three sentences is plenty.
You get a fixed fee and a timeline in writing before anything starts. I sign the NDA first — nothing is shared until it’s done.
I work through the six areas against the checklist — reviewing the code and interviewing the people who built it.
You get the executive summary, technical appendix and costed roadmap, then I walk you through the findings on a call.
Published UK fees scale with deal value: £10,000 to £25,000 for deals under £1m, £25,000 to £60,000 up to £10m, and £60,000 to £150,000+ above that. As a rule of thumb, boards budget 1 to 3% of deal value. I quote a fixed fee per deal, in writing before anything starts.
One to three weeks for a seed-stage company. A larger company with several systems to review can take up to eight. The timeline is agreed in writing alongside the fee.
The same problems keep coming up: code that lives in one person’s head and nowhere else; dev-shop work where the contracts don’t make clear who owns it; open-source code used in ways the licence doesn’t allow; growth claims that have never been tested under load; and systems that still work, but only because of people who have since left. The checklist above covers all of them.
Run the same review on yourself before investors run it on you. Write down who wrote which code and under what contract, list your open-source licences, separate your test and live environments, and get what people know out of their heads and onto paper. I run that review for founders too: you find the problems before investors do, and you fix them on your own schedule.
It’s a fair challenge. Companies rarely fail because of their technology, and some investors skip the review. But this report is not a pass or fail stamp. It answers one practical question: after the deal closes, what will this technology cost me? That covers fixing what is broken, keeping it running as the company grows, and what happens if the people who understand it leave. The answer can change the price, or whether the deal happens at all. And if everything is sound, you find that out before you sign, not after.
Someone who has built and run systems themselves, working independently — and they should earn their money from the review, not from what it finds. An agency makes money from finding problems to fix, so the findings can skew towards more work for them. This one is independent: the report is yours to take to any engineering team, including one I create. Build with me and the audit fee credits in full.
Deal stage, size of the system, the date you need the report by. You get a fixed fee and a timeline, or a straight no if it isn’t a fit.
You’ll be dealing with someone who has sat in both chairs: the founder being assessed and the consultant doing the assessing.