Due diligence checklist

Technical and commercial due diligence for deep-tech / science-based startups.

Technical

Core IP: patents filed / granted; freedom to operate (FTO) summary
Reproducibility: can results be replicated? Code/data availability
Benchmarks: SOTA comparison, datasets, evaluation protocol
Scalability: bottlenecks (compute, data, latency); roadmap to production
Team technical depth: publications, prior deployments, key hires

Commercial

Customer discovery: who pays, what problem, willingness to pay
Pricing and unit economics: LTV/CAC, gross margin, payback
Go-to-market: channel, sales motion, partnerships
Competitive moat: technical, data, distribution, or regulatory
Regulatory and compliance: sector-specific (e.g. FDA, GDPR, sector rules)

IP & legal

Ownership: university/employer assignments, co-inventor clarity
Licenses: in-licenses (data, code, patents); out-license obligations
Confidentiality and contracts: key customer/partner terms
Data rights: training data provenance, consent, retention

Team & governance

Cap table and option pool; vesting and acceleration
Advisors and conflicts; board composition
Runway and burn; next round timing and milestones

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