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Cluster: Series A Readiness

The 47 Questions Series A Diligence Asks

Institutional diligence is knowable. The question set is finite, stable, and teachable. These are the 47 recurring questions grouped by theme, with commentary on where founders typically under-prepare — and the shape of a good answer.

Run the Series A Diagnostic Back to Series A Readiness

Partners do not carry a literal 47-question checklist into meetings. But the associates and principals who run the memo behind the meeting do. The questions are stable across funds because they map to the same underlying thesis-testing: is this founder telling the truth, is the opportunity real, are the unit economics defensible, can this team scale, and is the governance clean enough to invest in.

Every question below has a "where founders under-prepare" note. The leverage is not in being able to answer — it is in being able to answer with evidence the diligence team can verify inside ten minutes, not three emails.

Key Takeaway: The difference between a two-week diligence and a six-week diligence is rarely the quality of the business. It is the speed with which questions convert to verifiable answers.
47 recurring diligence questions across seven categories
10 min target time to answer any question with verifiable evidence
≤ 10 unprepared answers = Series A ready threshold

Team (questions 1–6)

  1. Why you, why now? Under-prepared: generic founder story. Well-prepared: specific, non-obvious insight you have and your competitors don't.
  2. What prior companies have the founders built, and what happened to them? Under-prepared: selective omission. Well-prepared: clear account of both successes and setbacks.
  3. Who makes every material decision today? Under-prepared: "we all collaborate". Well-prepared: a clear decision-rights map by function.
  4. What is the hire plan for the next 12 months, by function, with expected start dates? Under-prepared: aspirational list. Well-prepared: prioritised, costed, with realistic timelines.
  5. Which two hires would most accelerate the business if made tomorrow? Under-prepared: "more engineers". Well-prepared: named roles with specific gap they close.
  6. What happens if the CTO (or other key person) leaves next month? Under-prepared: defensiveness. Well-prepared: honest continuity plan and what has been documented.

Market and category (questions 7–12)

  1. How big is the addressable market, and how did you size it? Under-prepared: top-down TAM from an analyst report. Well-prepared: bottom-up with account-level logic and a cited source.
  2. Who owns the category definition? Under-prepared: assumes you do. Well-prepared: specific evidence (analyst coverage, search volume, partner language).
  3. Who are the three most serious competitors and how are you different? Under-prepared: dismissive "we have no real competitors". Well-prepared: honest competitive map with head-to-head win/loss data.
  4. What is your wedge — the first narrow customer you win decisively? Under-prepared: broad horizontal framing. Well-prepared: named segment with why you win there specifically.
  5. What trend makes this the right time for this product? Under-prepared: macro trend hand-wave. Well-prepared: a specific shift in buyer behaviour with recent evidence.
  6. What could kill this market — what would have to be true for the opportunity to evaporate? Under-prepared: refusal to engage. Well-prepared: honest risk list with mitigations or acceptance.

Product and technology (questions 13–18)

  1. What problem does the product solve, for whom, and how did customers solve it before? Under-prepared: generic "digital transformation" framing. Well-prepared: specific before/after of a named customer's workflow.
  2. What is your technology moat, if any? Under-prepared: overstated defensibility. Well-prepared: honest assessment of what compounds over time (data, learning, network effects) and what doesn't.
  3. What does the architecture look like and does it scale to 10x customer count? Under-prepared: "we'll solve it when we need to". Well-prepared: architecture doc with the known scaling constraints and the plan for each.
  4. What is the product roadmap for the next 12–18 months? Under-prepared: long list of features. Well-prepared: prioritised bets with the customer problem each solves.
  5. What third-party dependencies materially affect operating reliability? Under-prepared: dismissive "none". Well-prepared: named dependencies with contingency plans.
  6. What IP is registered, and where are the assignment chains? Under-prepared: missing assignments from early contractors. Well-prepared: clean chain from every contributor.

Commercial and traction (questions 19–25)

  1. What is your top-of-funnel by channel, and what does conversion look like at each stage? Under-prepared: aggregated funnel. Well-prepared: per-channel breakdown with stage-level conversion rates.
  2. What is cohort retention by segment and time horizon? Under-prepared: blended retention. Well-prepared: cohort curves by segment, with annotations on what changed between cohorts.
  3. What is net revenue retention, and what drives it? Under-prepared: a single number. Well-prepared: decomposed into upsell, cross-sell, churn, and price-realisation.
  4. What is LTV to CAC by segment, not blended? Under-prepared: a single LTV/CAC headline. Well-prepared: per-segment numbers with the denominator methodology explained.
  5. What is CAC payback, and how does it vary by channel and segment? Under-prepared: aggregate. Well-prepared: segmented, with the trajectory over the last 18 months.
  6. What is the sales cycle length, and how is it changing? Under-prepared: point-in-time. Well-prepared: trended, with the specific motion changes that produced any improvement.
  7. Who are your top 10 customers, and what is the concentration risk? Under-prepared: hides concentration. Well-prepared: honest disclosure with retention rationale for each.

Unit economics and financials (questions 26–33)

  1. What is gross margin, how is it constructed, and what drives variance? Under-prepared: headline number without construction. Well-prepared: full bridge with the components that vary.
  2. What is contribution margin and how does it differ from gross? Under-prepared: confuses the two. Well-prepared: clean decomposition.
  3. What is the current burn rate, and what is the runway at that burn? Under-prepared: month-on-month variance hidden. Well-prepared: burn trajectory with the driver of any recent changes.
  4. What is the forecast, and what are the top 5 assumptions that drive 80% of it? Under-prepared: monolithic model. Well-prepared: assumption schedule with sensitivity analysis.
  5. How accurate have prior forecasts been? Under-prepared: avoids the question. Well-prepared: historical actuals-vs-forecast with honest commentary.
  6. What happens in a stress case — 50% of plan? Under-prepared: "we would grow more slowly". Well-prepared: specific actions, headcount impact, runway extension plan.
  7. What is the Rule of 40 today and on the forecast? Under-prepared: does not track it. Well-prepared: tracks it, understands what moves it.
  8. How much capital has been invested so far, and what has it funded? Under-prepared: aggregate. Well-prepared: use-of-funds bridge from each prior round to current operating state.

Defensibility and intangible assets (questions 34–39)

  1. What is your brand and how is it distinctive in the category? Under-prepared: "we have great brand". Well-prepared: specific evidence (inbound volume, earned mentions, win-rate differential).
  2. What customer capital have you accumulated? Under-prepared: number of customers. Well-prepared: depth of relationship, retention architecture, advocacy programmes.
  3. What proprietary data do you have, and does it compound? Under-prepared: "we collect lots of data". Well-prepared: named datasets with the reason they are defensible.
  4. What network effects exist, if any? Under-prepared: overstated. Well-prepared: honest — many businesses do not have them.
  5. What switching costs do your customers face? Under-prepared: abstract. Well-prepared: specific costs (integration, retraining, data migration) with customer examples.
  6. What culture and practices compound inside the business? Under-prepared: values statement. Well-prepared: specific rituals, documented decisions, institutional knowledge captured.

Risks, governance, and regulation (questions 40–47)

  1. What regulatory exposures does the business have? Under-prepared: "none we know of". Well-prepared: maps regulatory surface and current compliance status.
  2. What is the data-protection posture? Under-prepared: no GDPR documentation. Well-prepared: DPIA, data map, processor agreements, security certifications.
  3. What material contracts have change-of-control provisions? Under-prepared: has not checked. Well-prepared: full audit with mitigations or disclosures.
  4. Any current or threatened litigation? Under-prepared: hides or forgets. Well-prepared: full disclosure including settled disputes.
  5. Any employment issues — tribunals, formal grievances, at-risk departures? Under-prepared: avoids. Well-prepared: honest disclosure.
  6. Cap table cleanliness — any unusual provisions, unissued commitments, or dormant SAFEs? Under-prepared: surfaces late. Well-prepared: clean, with any complexity disclosed upfront.
  7. What governance structure will the company adopt post-round? Under-prepared: defers. Well-prepared: board composition plan, reserved matters, reporting cadence.
  8. What is the post-money exit horizon and the exit path logic? Under-prepared: abstract "IPO or strategic". Well-prepared: credible path with comparable transactions and the trigger conditions.
Example: One partner firm reports that their investment memos include, for every Series A, a "prepared vs unprepared" scoring across roughly these categories. Founders scoring consistently "prepared" across all seven close on median 18 days faster than founders who score unprepared in even two categories.

This is a directional operator observation, not a published dataset. Formal benchmark work on diligence duration vs preparation is on the Methodology team's roadmap.

Using this as a preparation tool

Walk through the 47 questions with your team. Score each one as "ready to answer with evidence in 10 minutes", "can answer but needs preparation", or "would need a week to answer credibly". The second and third categories are your pre-round work. If more than ten questions sit in the third category, you are not Series A ready — you are Series A preparing.

For the companion walk-through of the data room structure these answers populate, see the Series A data room: the 23 tabs investors expect. For the full preparation sequence, see Round Ready Academy Lesson 5.

The Bottom Line

Diligence is knowable. Walk the 47 questions with your team; score each honestly; convert the unprepared ones into prepared ones before the first partner meeting. The founders who do this close faster, at better valuations, with cleaner boards.

Start with the structured view of your asset base

Twelve drivers. Eight minutes. Free on Founder tier. The Round Readiness Diagnostic surfaces which of the 47 questions you can answer well and which need work.

Run the Series A Diagnostic