For Private Equity & Venture Investors · Pre-Deal
Financial diligence confirms the past.
Legal diligence mitigates liability.
We tell you whether the revenue story will hold.
The Pre-Deal Gap
By the time a deal reaches the data room, the numbers have been dressed for sale. Pipelines look full, retention looks stable, and the growth story fits neatly into the model. The commercial reality underneath is exactly what the seller has the least incentive to show you.
Financial and legal diligence examine what already happened. Neither answers the question your return actually depends on: can this company deliver the revenue it projects? That is the question we exist to answer, before you commit capital.
The risk: pricing a deal on a 20 million forecast that is 5 million in reality.
Our mandate: tell you if it is real, inflated, or fiction, calibrated to your thesis.CRM opportunities recycled through stages for 12 to 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 to 12 months of close. ARR looks stable at acquisition. The risk concentrates in a narrow window that tests the business almost immediately after 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 defensibility story that does not survive contact with a technically literate buyer. The claimed advantage is a feature, not a barrier, and competitors can replicate it. The premium multiple rests on a moat that is not actually there.
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. Our Commercial Investment Readiness Assessment deploys a dual-track methodology aimed at the two places every B2B commercial story fails: the mathematics and the behaviour. Scope is calibrated to the size of the cheque and the questions that actually move your decision.
What You Walk Away With
The most valuable commercial 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.
The Commercial Investment Readiness Assessment gives deal teams a concise findings document and a risk-rated view of the commercial story, calibrated to your specific investment thesis. Where the story is real, we say so. Where it is inflated or fiction, we show you exactly where and why.
Traditional advisors look in the rear-view mirror. S.L.A.M. is the navigation system.
The commercial engine supports the thesis. We confirm what is genuinely strong and flag the two or three things to watch after close.
Real value is there, but the forecast is optimistic. We quantify the gap so you can reprice or restructure with evidence, not instinct.
The commercial story does not survive scrutiny. We show you the failure mode before it becomes a write-down on your books.
Who We Help
Validate whether the target's revenue story is real before you commit capital, and price the risk you cannot see from the data room.
An independent read on your own commercial engine, the blind spots you cannot see from inside, and what to fix first.
See moreA clean commercial baseline before you commit management attention and capital to a value-creation plan across the portfolio.
See moreWhether the target's commercial relationships and synergy assumptions survive a change of owner and integration into your business.
See moreGet in Touch
Book a 15-minute call. No obligation. A direct conversation about the target, your thesis, and whether we are the right fit for this deal.