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Preparing Your AI Startup for VC Due Diligence
A founder's field guide to surviving the diligence room: what investors examine, how AI businesses get judged differently, and a readiness checklist.
Due diligence is where a strong story meets a cold spreadsheet, and the AI companies that survive it are the ones that prepared before the term sheet arrived. This guide walks you through exactly what investors examine, how AI businesses get judged differently, and the readiness checklist that turns a four-week scramble into a four-day formality.
What's inside
- 01Diligence is where the story meets the spreadsheet
- 02What investors actually examine
- 03The technical deep-dive: proving the model is yours and it works
- 04Model explainability and the questions you can't dodge
- 05Data provenance, rights and governance
- 06IP strategy for AI companies
- 07The data room investors expect
- 08Financial and metrics diligence for AI businesses
- 09The gross-margin reality of AI products
- 10Team, references and the backchannel
- 11Common red flags and how to avoid them
- 12AI-specific risks: dependency, regulation and hallucination liability
- 13How the diligence timeline actually unfolds
- 14Build the room before you need it
- 15Due-diligence readiness checklist
- 16Preparation, not promises
Includes 9 cited references and worked examples, written in plain language you can act on.
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