Commercial Diligence

What it is

Commercial diligence is the analytical work that tests whether the commercial thesis behind an investment holds. It sits alongside financial and quality-of-earnings work, but the questions are different. The financial diligence asks whether the numbers are real. Commercial diligence asks whether they can be made larger.

We work pre-disclosure, in parallel with deal teams, and on tight cycles. The output is a defensible point of view on the commercial trajectory of the target — independent of management's projections, grounded in market structure, and translated into a value-creation thesis the sponsor can underwrite.

What's in scope

Market and competitive landscape mapping. Buy-and-build target identification across fragmented verticals. Same-store growth lever analysis — pricing, mix, capacity, channel, retention. Workforce and integration economics where talent retention is the binding variable. MarTech and data infrastructure assessment. Commercial KPI baselining and forecast stress-testing.

The deliverable is shaped to the deal. For platform investments, the work product is typically a written thesis with supporting analysis. For add-on diligence inside an existing platform, it's faster and tighter — a memo, a target tier, a one-page commercial read.

What it's not

We do not perform financial diligence, quality-of-earnings analysis, legal review, or technology audits. We work alongside the firms that do, and we coordinate where the work overlaps — particularly on customer cohort analysis, retention economics, and CAC/LTV reconciliation between management's books and ours.

Our work does not serve the purpose of confirming a thesis the sponsor has already defined. The work tries to illuminate negative signals.

When sponsors engage us

Three patterns are common.

Platform diagnostic.

A sponsor is evaluating a new platform investment in a sector where the commercial structure is unfamiliar or fragmented. We map the landscape, identify the strongest acquisition targets, and frame the value-creation playbook before bid.

Add-on screen.

A sponsor inside a platform needs to evaluate a tuck-in. We assess the target's commercial fit — channel mix, pricing posture, brand architecture, integration risk — and surface the questions the financial diligence won't catch.

Pre-bid commercial read.

A sponsor is in a competitive process and needs an independent commercial point of view fast. The cycle is two to three weeks. The output is calibrated to the time available.

Engagement shape

Diligence engagements are typically fixed-scope, fixed-fee, and time-boxed. Cycles range from two weeks (pre-bid commercial read) to six weeks (full platform diagnostic).

The staffing model is lean — usually one senior operator running the workstream end to end. The work is AI-native: AI handles the analytical and production work that traditionally requires an analyst team, and the senior operator does the judgment work that doesn't compress. This is what allows the cycle times.