Due diligence by design.
What a SaaS or AI company should build from day one so that due diligence lifts its price instead of cutting it. Nine domains, three ideas that decide how diligence goes, and the specific transaction effect of each weakness. Written for founders and their boards, and for the investors and acquirers who will one day test them.
A buyer does not pay for revenue and technology. It pays for confidence that the revenue will hold, the product will scale, the assets will transfer and nothing ugly will surface after completion. Diligence is where that confidence is won or lost. Most companies treat diligence as a data-room exercise that starts when a sale starts. By then it is too late to fix the things that cost the most.
This paper measures nine domains that decide how diligence goes for a SaaS or AI company. For each one it sets out what a buyer tests, what to build from day one, and what a weakness costs in a transaction. The costs are specific: a lower multiple, a bigger escrow, a new indemnity, a deferred payment, a delay, or a buyer who walks. It pairs with the interactive Diligence Radar tool, which scores your company across the nine domains from a short profile and a fixed evidence ladder.
What is inside
- How the radar measures exposure against readiness, and the four rules that keep every readiness score tied to real evidence
- The three ideas the paper rests on: a consistent story reads as truth, response speed reads as readiness, and diligence is daily work not a project
- Nine domain-by-domain reads: chain of title, data provenance, revenue quality, commercial and change of control, privacy, security and resilience, AI governance and claims, sector and regulatory perimeter, insurability and disclosure
- 2026 shifts folded in: insurability and the end of "silent AI", AI-washing as an SEC and FTC enforcement risk, data-provenance now priced, agentic AI governed as actors, AI revenue durability
- EU AI Act dates updated to the Digital Omnibus timeline
- What this means if you are a founder, and what it means if you are an investor or a board
Who it is for
Founders and boards of growth-stage SaaS and AI companies preparing for a raise or a sale, and the investors and acquirers who will one day test them. It is a commercial and governance read, not legal, tax, accounting or investment advice.
Written from an operating perspective
By Andrew Wyatt, founder of Ortent Advisory. Four exits over three decades (Lotus to IBM, Paragon to Phone.com, Apertio to Nokia $240M, Clearswift to Lyceum) plus CGO and COO seats in digital health and life sciences at Sapio Sciences and Lumeon. The paper pairs with the interactive Diligence Radar and the self-scoring prompt, which runs the same nine domains from your own evidence.