Startup Technical Due Diligence Calculator
This startup and VC route focuses on investor diligence for growth-stage execution risk. It emphasizes whether current systems and team structure can absorb rapid scale without compounding failure risk.
Preliminary technology risk assessment. This is directional and should be followed by full technical due diligence.
Risk score
61/100
Overall assessment
Proceed with Conditions
Proceed only with clear remediation conditions and execution tracking.
Remediation cost
$165,800 - $343,800
Remediation timeline
3-6 months
Architecture
81
Technical debt
50
Delivery health
56
Team risk
63
Security
70
Cloud efficiency
50
Roadmap realism
25
Model
Weighted risk model
20/20/15/15/15/10/5
Top findings
- -Backup/DR restoration is not validated.
- -Roadmap realism shows elevated risk (25/100).
- -Technical debt shows elevated risk (50/100).
- -Cloud and infrastructure efficiency shows elevated risk (50/100).
- -Engineering delivery health shows elevated risk (56/100).
Architecture Fitness
Architecture shape, reliability, and recovery profile.
Technical Debt
Maintainability pressure from coverage, bugs, and legacy constraints.
Engineering Delivery Health
Release velocity and change stability indicators.
Team and Key-Person Risk
Team resilience, documentation, and concentration risk.
Security and Compliance
Control posture, testing discipline, and recovery readiness.
Cloud and Infrastructure Efficiency
Spend exposure and platform automation maturity.
Product and Roadmap Realism
Forward feasibility and claim reliability.
Startup/VC Method
How Startup Investor Diligence Differs
Interprets technical risk through scaling pressure, founder dependency, concentration of system knowledge, and debt-versus-velocity tradeoffs.
Uses the same base scoring model but with startup-oriented interpretation for portfolio and pre-investment screening.
Separates investor-facing diligence framing from internal architecture health-check workflows to avoid overlap with other clusters.
Supports go and no-go triage and remediation-priority conversations before full diligence engagement.
Field Setup Guide
Each field below explains what to input and how to keep assumptions consistent across reviewers.
Architecture style
Select the closest current architecture pattern. Use the current production shape, not a target future state.
Prod incidents / month
Average monthly production incidents requiring real intervention, not minor alerts.
MTTR (hours)
Mean time to recover service after incidents, measured in hours.
Horizontal scaling risk
Operational risk of scaling current workloads under growth pressure.
Test coverage (%)
Practical automated test coverage for critical business paths, not vanity coverage.
Release delays / month
How often releases are delayed due to technical blockers.
Open bugs
Active unresolved defects relevant to production stability and delivery.
Legacy systems
Count of legacy dependencies that materially constrain delivery or operations.
Deployment frequency
Current delivery cadence in production under normal operating conditions.
Lead time (days)
Average days from approved change to successful production release.
Failed deploy rate (%)
Percent of deployments that fail or require rollback or hotfix.
Hotfixes / month
Monthly emergency fixes applied after release due to instability.
Team size
Number of engineers actively responsible for the platform in scope.
Bus factor
Number of people whose loss would materially disrupt delivery continuity.
Attrition (%)
Annualized team attrition rate used as concentration and continuity signal.
Documentation maturity
How complete and operationally useful architecture and runbook documentation is.
MFA enabled
Whether multi-factor authentication is broadly enforced for critical systems.
Pen test recency
How recently formal penetration testing was completed.
SOC2 status
Current compliance maturity status used as a control signal.
Secrets management
Whether secrets handling is structured and controlled rather than ad-hoc.
Backup/DR tested
Whether backup and disaster recovery restoration has been tested, not only documented.
Cloud spend / month
Monthly cloud spend for the scoped platform, including core workloads.
IaC maturity
Maturity of infrastructure-as-code and repeatable environment management.
Monitoring maturity
Depth of observability, alert quality, and operational coverage.
Rollback maturity
Reliability and speed of rollback during failed releases.
Roadmap confidence
Confidence that roadmap commitments are technically feasible on current foundations.
Major rewrite planned
Whether a major rewrite is expected, which can indicate structural risk.
AI claims validated
Whether AI-related technical claims are validated with operating evidence.
Frequently Asked Questions
+How is this different from startup technical assessment pages?
This page is explicitly investor-facing diligence framing, while internal assessments are usually operator-focused health checks.
+Why include founder and bus-factor risk?
In startups, concentration risk can dominate deal outcome even when product velocity appears strong.
+Can this be used for portfolio monitoring?
Yes. Repeated scoring helps track risk drift over time across portfolio companies.
+Which startup metrics usually move most after investment?
Bus factor, deployment stability, documentation maturity, and incident recovery typically improve fastest with focused support.
+How conservative should startup inputs be?
Use the lower-confidence interpretation first. Optimistic assumptions can hide scale fragility in early-stage teams.
+Can this be used during pre-seed or seed diligence?
Yes, as a framing tool. At very early stage, treat the output as directional context rather than strict gating logic.
Related Technical Diligence Pages
Technical Due Diligence Calculator
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Open ->Buy-Side Technical Due Diligence
M&A-focused technical diligence framing for acquirers: integration risk, IP and license ownership, key-person retention, post-close scalability, and rebuild risk.
Open ->SaaS Due Diligence Calculator
SaaS-specific technical due diligence framing: multi-tenancy isolation, cloud unit economics, churn as technical signal, uptime and SLA history, and platform durability.
Open ->Remediation Cost Calculator
Estimate post-diligence remediation budget and timeline from issue severity mix, engineering capacity, and blended delivery cost assumptions.
Open ->