Inside Our Due Diligence: What Inspakt Evaluates at Seed
We believe that transparency about how investors evaluate companies makes founders better prepared, accelerates good partnerships, and creates more honest early conversations about fit. With that conviction in mind, this article is an attempt to document — in as much practical detail as is useful — the diligence process we run at Inspakt Technology Ventures when evaluating seed-stage B2B SaaS and marketplace investments.
This is not a comprehensive legal or financial document. It is a practical guide to what we are thinking, what we are looking for, and what the specific activities of our process involve. Founders who understand our process should find our conversations more efficient and our feedback more actionable.
Overview: Our Process in Five Stages
Our standard diligence process runs from first contact to term sheet in approximately four to six weeks for companies that progress through all stages. The five stages are:
Review of pitch deck or executive summary. Assessment against our three core thesis categories: vertical SaaS, API-first infrastructure, B2B marketplace. Confirmation that stage, geography, and investment size are aligned with our fund parameters. One partner reviews and passes or declines within 48 hours of submission.
Initial conversation with the founding team focused on the "why you, why now" question. We are assessing founder-market fit, problem clarity, and early go-to-market signal. We ask founders to walk us through the customer they know best: how did they find them, what does the customer say about the problem, what does success look like for that customer six months from now.
If the founder call goes well, we proceed to deep dive. This involves a product demo, a detailed financial and metrics review, customer reference calls, technical architecture discussion, and competitive landscape mapping. This stage requires the most time from the founding team: typically three to four hours across multiple interactions plus reference introductions to two or three customers.
The lead partner presents the investment case to the full partnership. The founding team typically does not attend the IC meeting, but may be asked to join for a 30-minute Q&A session if the partnership has specific follow-up questions. The IC presentation format covers team, market, product, traction, business model, competition, and risks.
If IC approves, we issue a term sheet. Our standard term sheet uses NVCA-standard documentation. We have a one-business-day response time commitment on standard term sheet comments from founding counsel. We aim to close within 21 days of term sheet execution.
Stage 3 in Detail: What We Actually Evaluate
The deep dive stage is where most of our time is invested and where most of our investment decisions are made. Here is a detailed description of each component:
Product Demo
We ask founders to walk us through the core workflow of the product as a real customer would use it — not a feature showcase, but a task completion walkthrough from the perspective of the primary buyer persona. We are evaluating: Does the product do what it claims to do? Is the UX polished enough to be used by non-technical buyers? How does it handle edge cases and error states? Does the product experience reflect the depth of domain knowledge we expect based on the founder's background?
Metrics Review
We request a data room with the following metrics, benchmarked monthly for the past 6–12 months where available:
- MRR and ARR with month-over-month growth rates
- Customer count by acquisition channel
- Cohort retention analysis (or best available proxy at very early stage)
- Average contract value and contract length distribution
- CAC by channel and LTV by customer segment
- Burn rate, cash runway, and headcount by function
- Gross margin by revenue type
We do not expect perfection in these metrics at seed stage, and we do not disqualify companies for small sample sizes. What we are looking for is a founding team that understands their metrics with precision and can explain the drivers behind each trend.
Customer Reference Calls
We conduct three to five customer reference calls for every investment we make. We select the references ourselves from the list provided by the company — we do not accept hand-picked references from the founding team without the ability to expand the reference pool. We ask customers three questions: (1) What problem were you trying to solve when you adopted this product? (2) What has changed in your operations since implementation? (3) If the company ceased to exist tomorrow, what would you do? The answers to these questions tell us more about the strength of the product-market fit than any metrics presentation.
Technical Architecture Review
Our technical partner conducts a 45–60 minute technical architecture review with the CTO or engineering lead. We are evaluating: Is the technical approach appropriate for the problem being solved? Are there architectural choices that will create significant technical debt at scale? Is the product built on a foundation that allows for the API integrations and data architecture that the product roadmap implies? Is security handled at a level appropriate for the enterprise buyer the company is targeting?
Competitive Landscape Mapping
We conduct independent competitive research in parallel with the founder meetings. We are looking for: What alternatives does the buyer consider alongside this product? What is the incumbent solution (including "do nothing" and spreadsheets) and why has it persisted? What is the timing argument for why this is the right moment to build in this category? We then compare our independent view of the competitive landscape with the founder's view, and we pay close attention to gaps — things we found that the founder did not surface, or things the founder surfaces that we cannot independently corroborate.
What Creates Problems in Our Process
In the spirit of transparency, it is worth identifying the most common issues that slow down or derail our process:
- Customer reference reluctance: Founders who are hesitant to provide customer references signal that they are uncertain how customers will characterize the product. We interpret this reluctance as a yellow flag and will expand our reference outreach independently if needed.
- Metrics misrepresentation: We regularly encounter cases where metrics are presented in ways that obscure underlying issues — using TCV instead of ARR, presenting gross churn without net expansion, showing MoM growth rates without absolute base context. When we identify these presentation patterns, we ask for the underlying data directly. Founders who are reluctant to provide the underlying data create significant friction.
- Undisclosed competitive overlaps: Founders who do not proactively disclose known competitive overlaps with our existing portfolio companies — or who represent competitive situations inaccurately — disqualify themselves immediately. We check all investments for portfolio conflict before the first founder call.
- Cap table complexity: Unusual cap table structures — including prior rounds with onerous terms, investor overlap conflicts, or founder equity distribution that creates management incentive concerns — can significantly complicate or delay term sheet issuance. Founders should be prepared to explain their cap table history clearly and early in the process.
What Makes Our Process Go Fast
The fastest our process has moved from first contact to term sheet is 11 days. This is exceptional, but the factors that enabled it are illustrative: (1) the founder had a complete data room available from day one of the process; (2) customer references were introduced within 24 hours of the request; (3) the technical architecture was clean and well-documented; (4) the competitive landscape was accurately and completely presented by the founder; and (5) the metrics told a consistent story that matched the founder's narrative precisely.
Preparation pays in fundraising, as it does in every other commercial process. Founders who arrive at our process with complete documentation, rehearsed metrics narratives, and strong reference relationships consistently move faster and receive better terms than founders who are assembling these materials during the process.
If you are preparing to raise a seed round and would like to submit for consideration, or if you simply want an early conversation about whether there is a fit, please reach out. We aim to provide meaningful feedback to every founder who engages with us in good faith.
Key Takeaways
- Inspakt's five-stage diligence process: Initial Screen, Founder Call, Deep Dive (5–10 days), Partner IC Meeting, and Term Sheet — typically 4–6 weeks from first contact.
- Deep dive components: product demo (task completion, not feature showcase), metrics review, 3–5 customer reference calls, technical architecture review, and independent competitive mapping.
- We select our own customer references — we do not accept only hand-picked references without ability to expand the pool.
- Process killers: reference reluctance, metrics misrepresentation, undisclosed competitive overlaps, and complex cap table issues.
- The fastest path to term sheet: complete data room on day one, rapid reference introductions, clean architecture documentation, accurate competitive framing, and metrics that match the narrative precisely.