Resumen de Creación de un framework metodológico para las technical due Diligences
Iván Sanz Prieto
A Due Diligence generally covers the financial, accounting, commercial and technological fields. In the first three, it is easier to be able to do a complete analysis, because you work with objective data such as balance sheets, economic results, indebtedness, etc. However, the technological part is much more complicated to evaluate since there is no specific methodology that provides measurable and objective data that will help us to provide information in decision-making. The complexity inherent in investing in start-ups is since a large part of the company is intangible and difficult to measure; How do I evaluate the technological ecosystem, the development methodology or the adoption of the product? At present, this type of report is carried out arbitrarily, and sometimes it only consists of interviews with the development team about the code and the operation of the application or the technological part is ignored and only the financial and marketing part is evaluated. which represents a clear risk, as it does not have all the necessary information and relevant data that facilitate decision-making in a more accurate way.
Thus, it is about establishing an intuitive and safe methodology that can cover in a precise and standardized way all the aspects to be evaluated in a Technical Due Diligence and the necessary tools for its implementation. To this end, six control areas have been defined, covering all aspects and technical and operational particularities of start-ups. These areas of control are the team, the technology ecosystem, technology competency, product adoption and maturity, development processes, and product technology. To achieve these six areas of control, the existing literature has been reviewed and analysed, and a survey of 30 leading experts was carried out, asking them about the highlights to consider when evaluating a start-up, and finally, different existing Due Diligence methods were reviewed.
Once the areas have been identified, control and evaluation points have been established because of the investigation, which has provided a measurable and qualifiable model. This model has evolved into a prototype that has approximately 100 questions to collect information, and through a mathematical calculation provides specific data on the risk and value of the company, as well as recommendations and aspects to improve.
To validate the methodology, historical data from 43 start-ups has been used, whose indicators and data have served to feed, compare, and extract the results and conclude that both the result of the evaluation and the recommendations provided are valid and help and facilitate decision making when valuing an asset. This validation has been carried out after entering the known data of the 43 start-ups in the prototype, answering all the questions in the questionnaire and checking that the result obtained is aligned with the evolution of start-ups in recent years. In addition, applying the proposed methodology, each of the six areas can be analysed and thus identify where there is more room for improvement to carry out the necessary corrective actions and be able to increase the value of the asset.
