Commercial Due Diligence · London
Financial diligence confirms the past.
Legal diligence mitigates liability.
We validate the future.
The Information Gap
In complex B2B sectors, early-stage sales pipelines are routinely filled with optimism rather than intent. Investors scrutinise spreadsheets, yet these frequently obscure the genuine commercial reality of the companies they are evaluating.
Our mission is to bridge this critical information gap, providing a rigorous, forward-looking assessment of the one question that determines your return.
The risk: investing based on a £20M forecast that is actually £5M in reality.
Our mandate: tell you if the £20M is real, inflated, or fiction.CRM opportunities recycled through stages for 12–18 months without meaningful progression. Each appears real in the data room. None will close. The tell is the activity log and the gap between pipeline age and average sales cycle.
Letters of intent from strategic partners that were never operationally real, created to demonstrate traction, not binding, not funded. They dissolve post-close, taking the commercial rationale for the deal with them.
Headline ARR growth masking accelerating churn in older cohorts. New logo acquisition papers over a leaky bucket. The topline looks healthy; cohort analysis by acquisition period almost always tells a different story.
A significant proportion of the customer base with contracts renewing within 6–12 months of close. ARR looks stable at acquisition. The risk concentrates in a narrow window that tests the business almost immediately after deal completion.
Every meaningful relationship, every renewal, upsell and referral, runs through a single individual. The thesis assumes scalable go-to-market. The reality is a founder-dependent operation with no institutional commercial infrastructure behind it.
Revenue diversified by customer count but flowing almost entirely through a single reseller or platform partner. End-customer relationships are not owned. They are licensed from an intermediary whose terms can change at any point.
Market sizing that conflates total addressable market with the serviceable and obtainable slice. The growth runway looks vast in the pitch deck and constrained in any rigorous bottoms-up analysis.
A business repositioned in a higher-multiple category without the product depth or defensible differentiation to justify it. The commercial story collapses the moment a technically literate buyer examines the architecture.
Our Approach
Unlike advisors who review CRM exports, S.L.A.M. operates as a veteran commercial unit with intimate knowledge of how sales teams, inadvertently or deliberately, obscure pipeline issues. Within a focused 10-day engagement, we deploy a dual-track methodology targeting the two primary failure points in every B2B company: the mathematics and the behaviour.
Investment thesis review, data room access, identification of the highest-priority risk areas for this specific transaction.
Simultaneous quantitative analysis and qualitative fieldwork. CRM forensics, customer calls, sales team assessment, and pipeline interrogation run in parallel.
A direct, concise report answering three questions: is the commercial story real, where are the specific risks, and what must be true for the investment thesis to hold.
The most valuable commercial due diligence output is not a lengthy presentation. It is a clear, direct answer to the questions that determine whether you proceed, renegotiate, or walk away.
Our report is structured around conviction, not volume. Deal teams receive a concise findings document, a risk-rated summary, and a direct recommendation on the commercial story, calibrated to your specific investment thesis.
Why Traditional Diligence Fails
Financial diligence examines historical performance. Legal diligence identifies regulatory exposure. Neither interrogates the single question that determines your return: can this company actually deliver the revenue it projects?
We are not career consultants. We are seasoned commercial leaders who have carried quotas, built high-performing global teams, and executed successful exits.
S.L.A.M. fills the gap between spreadsheet analysis and commercial reality, assessing execution capability, not just financial history.
Traditional advisors look in the rear-view mirror. S.L.A.M. is the navigation system.
The Partners
We know what works because we have done it ourselves. We know what fails because we have fixed it for others.
The machine. Examines whether unit economics are fundamentally flawed, whether the pipeline is genuinely stagnant, and whether the underlying data is misleading or structurally inaccurate.
The people. Assesses whether the sales team has genuine hunting instincts, whether leadership demonstrates real competence, and whether the product pitch resonates with actual market demand.
Get in Touch
Book a 15-minute call. No obligation. A direct conversation about your next investment and whether we're the right fit.