Technical Diligence Panel — Deep-Tech VC

The core claim was a step-change in process efficiency. The fund needed independent experts who understood both the underlying chemistry and the brutal realities of moving from pilot to commercial plant — and who had no stake in the company or its competitors. The risk was funding a lab result that would never survive an industrial environment.

• +Split the diligence into two questions: does the science work in principle, and does it hold at commercial scale. Staffed each with the right expert
• +Sourced a panel of six: two independent process scientists, three plant and scale-up engineers and one permitting specialist
• +Ran technical deep-dives under strict scope, drawing only on general domain expertise and public disclosures
• +Reconciled disagreements between the scientists and the engineers in a joint follow-up rather than averaging them away

• +A technical risk register ranking the scale-up failure modes by likelihood and severity
• +An independent read on whether the pilot efficiency was plausibly reproducible at commercial scale
• +A capex-and-permitting reality check on the company's stated timeline

• +The fund invested with a milestone-based structure tied directly to the two highest-rated scale-up risks
• +The technical register became the template for the fund's diligence on later hardware deals
• +One failure mode the founder had underweighted was designed into the term sheet as a gating milestone

This is a representative, anonymised composite of a typical venture capital engagement. Client identity is removed and the figures illustrate the format and scale of the work — they are not a record of a single named mandate. Every expert call is scoped to general market knowledge, screened for material non-public information before findings reach a deal team, and documented for audit. See our compliance framework for full detail.