Tech Due Diligence Questionnaire
Designed to assess the technical risk and scalability of a startup’s technology.
How to Use This Questionnaire
For VCs: Use this as a structured guide to evaluate whether a startup’s technology is viable, scalable, and secure.
For Founders: Be prepared to answer these questions convincingly to demonstrate technical readiness.
For Technical Due Diligence Experts: Use this as a foundation for deeper evaluations, including live engineer interviews.
If you want an in depth analysis of a particular company Valkyrie Consulting can provide these services! Please contact tatiana@valkyrie.associates or use our form.
1. Technology Stack & Architecture
What are the core technologies used in your stack (languages, frameworks, cloud providers, databases, etc.)?
Why did you choose this tech stack, and how does it compare to alternatives?
Is your architecture monolithic or microservices-based? Why?
How easily can your tech stack scale as the user base grows?
Have you performed load testing to validate scalability limits?
What third-party dependencies (APIs, SDKs, libraries) are critical to your product?
Do you have any proprietary technology, and is it patented?
2. Security & Compliance
What security protocols and best practices are implemented in your system?
Have you undergone penetration testing or security audits? If yes, what were the key findings?
How is user data stored and encrypted (e.g., end-to-end encryption, hashing for passwords)?
Are you compliant with relevant regulations (GDPR, CCPA, HIPAA, SOC 2, ISO 27001)?
What is your incident response plan for data breaches?
Do you have role-based access control (RBAC) or other user permission management?
3. Team & Technical Expertise
Who are the key members of your engineering team, and what is their technical background?
Do you have a technical co-founder or CTO? What is their experience?
Have you worked together before on previous ventures or projects?
What is your hiring plan for engineering talent over the next 12-24 months?
Are there any skill gaps in the current team that could impact execution?
What percentage of development is outsourced vs. in-house?
4. Scalability & Infrastructure
What is your cloud strategy (AWS, Azure, GCP, hybrid, on-prem)?
How do you ensure high availability and minimize downtime?
What are the biggest scalability bottlenecks in your system today?
Do you have auto-scaling or redundancy mechanisms in place?
How do you handle data replication and backups?
What are your expected cloud infrastructure costs at scale (1M users, 10M users, etc.)?
5. Technical Debt & Maintainability
How much technical debt does your system have today?
Do you follow a structured code review and documentation process?
How easy is it to onboard new engineers into your codebase?
Have you experienced significant refactoring or rewrites of your code?
What is your CI/CD (Continuous Integration & Deployment) strategy?
6. AI & Machine Learning (If Applicable)
What type of AI/ML models are you using, and how were they trained?
What is your data pipeline strategy for model training and retraining?
How do you handle model bias and fairness issues?
Do you have a clear AI governance and explainability framework?
What are the hardware and computational requirements for running your models at scale?
7. Intellectual Property & Competitive Advantage
Is any part of your technology proprietary, patented, or defensible?
Have you performed a freedom-to-operate (FTO) analysis to ensure no patent conflicts?
How does your technology compare to competitors' solutions?
Do you have any network effects, data advantages, or unique integrations?
8. Product & Engineering Roadmap
What is your technical roadmap for the next 12-24 months?
What are the key engineering milestones you must hit for product growth?
Are there any anticipated major architecture changes?
What would be the biggest technical risk to achieving your vision?
How do you plan to handle legacy systems or migrations as you grow?
9. Business Continuity & Risk Assessment
What are the top three technical risks facing your company today?
If your lead engineers or CTO left, how would development continue?
Have you stress-tested your system for extreme traffic surges or cyberattacks?
Do you have a disaster recovery plan?
10. Funding & Resource Allocation for Technology
What percentage of your current funding is allocated to technology development?
Do you have sufficient runway to hire, maintain, and scale your tech team?
How are you prioritizing engineering resources between feature development, infrastructure, and technical debt reduction?
