Before an investment, an acquisition or a round, someone has to establish whether the technology exists, whether it is defensible, and whether the people running it can take it where they say. That examination ends in a form an investment committee can actually decide on.
It is an examination best run by someone who has been through it. Patents filed and defended, a technology company founded in California, a spell as managing partner of a venture capital firm: assessing a technology before putting money into it is the same exercise that later reaches a board, except that there the assessor was carrying the risk too. Filings, companies and dates are in the record →
It is not checked in slides. It is checked on the system and with the people who wrote it, separately from the people who present it.
A patent on the wall is not a barrier to entry. What counts is the real reach of the claims, and who owns them.
After the deal the risk is yours, together with everything that was not mentioned before it.
This is the part no document contains, and almost always the part that decides how the investment ends.
It starts with what there is: technical documentation, the code if it is opened up, the patent family, customer and supplier contracts, audit findings.
Then the people, one at a time. It is not an audit and it is better that it does not feel like one: the point is to learn who knows what, and where the versions stop matching.
The committee receives a short document — the kind an investment committee actually reads — with findings ordered by impact on price, and for each one what can be fixed and what cannot.
If it helps, it is presented to the committee in person, questions included. Including when the answer is that the deal, as it stands, should not be done.
The very fact that you are looking at that companydoes not leave this room.
I take the confidentiality agreement as given, in both directions, and I sign it before receiving any document. The name of a deal I have worked on does not appear on this site and will not: the best work is the work nobody ever heard about.
Material comes to me and goes back protected. If you prefer, the first conversation happens on an encrypted channel and leaves nothing written down that matters.
There is also the other side: preparing a technology company for the examination it is about to face, before someone else runs it. How to prepare
I am co-founder and technical director of CyberGrant. I do not examine companies that compete with CyberGrant, nor companies in which I hold an interest, and before accepting an engagement I declare in writing what I own. If a conflict emerges during the work, I stop and tell you.
Valerio Pastore
Deals have a date. If yours is close, write to me that there is something to discuss and we will speak.
Get in touchThe same examination, brought to a board table. Board appointment, risk committee, advisory board, fixed-term engagement.
The mandate on a board →Patents filed and granted, companies, institutions, capital. Only things filed with an office, awarded by a jury or entered in a register.
Open the record →The criterion for judging a company's security posture: whether the protection sits in the infrastructure or inside the data. With the demonstration performed live.
Read the thesis →