Investors look at the product, the architecture, and the numbers. Your product needs to show well in all three.
Pre-seed and seed investors are making a bet on the team and the technology. Technical due diligence — a code review, an architecture question, a 'show me how it scales' — is part of most institutional rounds. We build products that pass technical scrutiny and demos that make investors excited to write a check.
Raising a round with a prototype or MVP that needs to be hardened, instrumented, and made presentable before the technical due diligence process
Founders raising their first institutional round often underestimate the technical scrutiny that comes with the term sheet. Seed investors at credible funds (Y Combinator alumni, Andreessen, Sequoia, Benchmark) routinely do 2–4 hour technical reviews: architecture walkthrough, codebase inspection of key modules, database schema review, and the security posture questions. Angel investors with technical backgrounds do their own assessment.
The most common technical due diligence failures:
Brittle architecture: The product works for current users but has no clear path to 10× scale — missing caching layers, N+1 database queries throughout, no background job system.
Missing metrics: The business story requires a compelling MRR chart. If Stripe is set up correctly and the billing instrumentation is clean, the MRR chart is available. If billing was bolted on by whoever built it first, the revenue data requires manual reconciliation.
Security issues: Any competent technical investor will run a basic vulnerability assessment. SQL injection vulnerabilities, exposed API keys in the codebase (found with GitHub secret scanning), or missing authentication on admin endpoints are deal-killers.
No observability: "What's your p99 response time?" "What's the error rate?" If the product has no monitoring, the answer is "we don't know" — not the answer that closes rounds.
Product that performs well in technical due diligence — clean architecture, observable metrics, Stripe billing instrumentation, and the operational story that makes investors confident
Architecture documentation
System architecture diagram, data model documentation, and technology choice rationale. Investors can understand the architecture in 30 minutes instead of 2 hours.
Stripe billing instrumentation
Clean MRR, ARR, churn, and customer count metrics extractable from Stripe. Stripe billing model designed for the revenue story you're telling.
Performance baseline
Core user flows load tested at 10× current traffic. Key query plans reviewed and indexed. Response time baselines documented.
Security hardening
OWASP Top 10 review and remediation. Dependency vulnerability audit and fixes. Authentication and authorization review.
Observability setup
Sentry for error tracking with configured alerting. Vercel Analytics for real user performance monitoring. Uptime monitoring.
Demo environment
A stable, seeded demo environment that performs reliably during investor demos — separate from production, pre-populated with compelling data.
One honest number to start.
Fixed-scope, fixed-price. The number below is the starting point — final scope is built from your brief.
Product that performs well in technical due diligence — clean architecture, observable metrics, Stripe billing instrumentation, and the operational story that makes investors confident
Three steps, every time.
The same repeatable engagement on every project. No surprises, no mystery, no billable ambiguity.
Brief & discovery.
We send you questions, then get on a call. Output: a written scope with every step, feature, and integration listed.
Build & ship.
Fixed schedule, weekly reviews. No scope creep unless you change the scope — and if you do, we reprice it transparently.
Warranty & retainer.
30-day warranty on every launch. Most clients stay on a monthly retainer for ongoing features and maintenance.
Why Fixed-Price Matters Here
Fundraising has a timeline. The product needs to be investor-ready before the first partner meeting. Fixed scope, fixed price, fixed delivery date.
Related engagements.
Questions, answered.
The sequence is usually: (1) product demo — does it work as described, (2) architecture walkthrough — what's the stack, how does it scale, (3) code review of 2–3 representative modules — looking for code quality and security practices, (4) infrastructure review — where does it run, how is it deployed, (5) security questions — how is auth handled, how is data encrypted.
Typically 4–8 weeks depending on the state of the product. Products built on solid foundations need documentation and instrumentation (2–3 weeks). Products with technical debt need remediation before documentation (6–8 weeks).
Product hardening and due diligence prep: from $18k for documentation and instrumentation. Full technical debt remediation + prep: from $30k. Fixed-price.
Tell Ryel about your project.
Describe what you’re building and what outcome you need. You’ll have a written, fixed-price scope within the week.