This article is part of an ongoing series on Due Diligence. To learn more about performing due diligence quickly and effectively, download this free eBook today Stones Unturned: An Investor's Guide to Due Diligence in Early Stage Companies or purchase our books at Amazon.com.
In addition to articles and eBooks, the Seraf Compass makes various tools and checklists available for anyone to use.
We’ve published a fair amount about due diligence and being a deal lead. In those pieces we talk a lot about the importance of having a good diligence template to ensure the final product is useful to the reader. Here for your reference is our Due Diligence Report Template. The report template is focused on 11 major topics that should be researched and understood when performing due diligence on an early stage technology company. For each topic, we provide you with an explanation of the section as well as example questions that may make sense to discuss in the remarks column.
This report template is very structured in a three column format. That might feel limiting at first to the uninitiated, but it is deliberately designed as a table to force the authors to be concise. Experience conducting hundreds of diligence projects and leading dozens and dozens of syndications has taught us that it’s important to be succinct in your diligence summary. Otherwise, you will end up with a long report that investors won’t read through, thus defeating the purpose of the report. If you have important detail or documents that you feel must be included in your findings, you can make them into appendices and refer to them in the report, but it can be a slippery slope toward an excessively long package. A better approach is to keep primary research materials and memos in a cloud folder and make the folder available to the minority of investors who want more detail.
Download Due Diligence Report Template >>
For more on the due diligence process, download this free eBook - Stones Unturned: An Investor's Guide to Due Diligence in Early Stage Companies - or purchase our books at Amazon.com.
