Code & IP ownership
You need signed assignments for everyone who ever touched the code, and an open-source licence inventory with nothing copyleft in the core. It's the classic late-diligence surprise, and the slowest one to fix.
For founders raising Seed to Series A
A CTO for the Raise
Somewhere between the first partner meeting and the term sheet, an investor's technical panel will take your product apart: who owns the code, what breaks at scale, whether the AI claim is real. Founders rarely lose the round there. They lose weeks, leverage, and price. I get the technical story straight before the data room opens, and hold it through the raise.
Unmind co-founder & CTO, zero to Series B Vault Platform VP Technology, acquired 2025 25+ years, remote-first and on-site when needed
Know what's coming
What Technical DD Actually Asks
Six areas, near-identical from fund to fund. Every one is fixable before the process starts, and expensive to discover during it.
Team & key-person risk
DD asks who owns technology, what happens if they leave, and who sits across from the panel. "The founder, winging it" is an answer investors price in.
Architecture & scale
You need a description an outsider can follow, and honest answers about what breaks at 10x. It's not about perfection. It's about credibility on the trade-offs and a dated plan.
Security & data protection
Panels check access control, secrets, backups someone has actually restored, and the UK GDPR paperwork: processing records, DPAs, retention. It's cheap to fix early, and alarming to find in a report.
Delivery & roadmap
DD checks whether the team ships what the deck promises, and whether the roadmap connects this raise to dated delivery. Panels read commit history and sprint boards.
The AI story
The 2026 addition asks what is real in production, what it costs to run, and whether the deck is ahead of the truth. Stretched AI claims are now a standard DD finding.
The pre-raise fix
The DD-Readiness Audit
The 30-Day Tech Audit, scoped to a live or imminent fundraise. Fixed fee, fixed month, run by the person who will defend the findings.
What you get in 30 days
- A DD-ready technical narrative: architecture, decisions, trade-offs, in language investors read
- A prioritised risk register, fixes sequenced by what actually threatens the round
- The data-room checklist: IP assignments, licences, security posture, key policies
- An honest AI position: what is real, what it costs, what the plan is
- A board-ready summary you can put in front of investors as-is
Fixed scope · fixed fee
From £4,000
Runs alongside your normal delivery; your team loses almost no time to it. Everything lands in writing, usable whether or not we work together afterwards.
Fee credited against a retainer if you proceed within 60 days.
Book a call about your raiseThen the round itself
Fractional Cover Through the Raise
A raise is 3 to 6 months of technical scrutiny landing on a team that still has to ship. At 2 to 4 days per week I own the technical narrative with investors, sit the DD sessions, keep delivery moving so the metrics hold, and hire ahead of the round so the post-raise plan is credible. Investor DD also reads continuity: a senior technical leader who stays through the raise is part of the answer.
Engagement shapes and the full rate card are on the services page. The work behind this page, Unmind to Series B and Vault Platform to acquisition, is in selected work; an acquisition is the hardest technical DD there is.
Common questions
What does technical due diligence cover at Seed or Series A?
Six areas come up in almost every process: code and IP ownership (signed assignments, open-source licences), team and key-person risk, architecture and how it behaves under growth, security and data protection, delivery credibility against the roadmap, and increasingly the AI story: whether what the deck claims is real in production. The depth varies with the round; the checklist barely does.
When should we start preparing for technical DD?
Three to six months before the raise opens. The slowest fixes are legal: chasing signed IP assignments from past contractors and untangling agency contracts can take months, and unpapered IP is the classic late-diligence surprise that delays or reprices a round. Architecture notes, licence inventories, and security basics close in weeks once someone senior owns them.
Do I need a full-time CTO to get through a raise?
Usually not. Investor DD wants credible senior ownership of the technical story, not a payroll line. A fractional CTO at 2 to 4 days per week can own the narrative, sit the DD sessions, and keep delivery moving through the round, at a fraction of the £120,000 to £180,000 full-time cost you probably cannot commit to mid-raise anyway.
What happens if the audit finds real problems?
That is the point of running it before investors do. Found first, problems become a sequenced fix list and an honest line in the data room, which reads as competence. Found by the investor’s panel, the same problems become a price change, a delayed close, or a pass. Nothing in the report is softened, and the risk register is written so you can act on it whether or not we work together afterwards.
Raising in the next 2 quarters?
The earlier the technical story gets straight, the more it is worth. 2 fractional CTO slots open this quarter; a 30-minute call tells you honestly whether you need one of them.