For — Investors & Private Equity
Investors & Private Equity
Independent technical due diligence on hardware and deep-tech deals — an operator's read on the technology, team, roadmap, and supply chain before you commit capital.
Independent technical due diligence on hardware and deep-tech deals — an operator's read on the technology, team, roadmap, and supply chain before you commit capital.
Before you commit capital to a hardware or deep-tech deal, you need someone who has actually taken advanced technology from concept to volume — and knows where these things really break.
As a Technologist who directed 20+ chipsets, ran 100+ person organizations, and generated multi-billion dollars in lifetime sales, Christian evaluates a technology, team, roadmap, and supply chain the way an operator would, not a spreadsheet.
An unbiased, operator-grade assessment of whether the technology does what the deck claims — and what it will really take to get it to market.
Evaluating the core technology, patents, and defensibility from someone with 20+ patents — separating genuine advantage from marketing.
An honest read on whether the engineering organization can actually execute the roadmap — leadership, depth, and gaps that money alone won't fix.
Where a promising prototype hits reality: DFM, validation, qualification, and the industrialization risk between a working sample and volume.
Assessing supplier dependency, single-source and critical-material exposure, and the sourcing realities that can quietly break a business model.
Ongoing operator-level support after the deal closes — board-ready insight and hands-on help to de-risk execution and protect the investment.
Independent technical due diligence from an operator who has taken advanced technology from concept to volume — not a surface-level review.
Technical Due DiligenceA grounded assessment of the core technology, IP, and roadmap that separates genuine advantage from a persuasive narrative.
Technology & IP AssessmentPost-investment engineering advisory and an honest evaluation of whether the team and supply chain can actually deliver.
Execution RiskFive areas anchor an engineering diligence: the technology and IP, the engineering team and organization, product and roadmap maturity, manufacturability and scale-up, and the supply chain. Each is assessed against what an operator has actually seen take advanced technology from concept to volume, with specific red flags that a financial model alone will never surface.
| Area | What we assess | Red flags |
|---|---|---|
| Technology & IP | Core claims, patent ownership, freedom to operate | Unverifiable claims, thin or contested IP, license gaps |
| Engineering team & org | Depth, key-person dependence, process maturity | Single points of failure, no design controls, high attrition |
| Product / roadmap maturity | Technology readiness level versus the stated plan | Demo-ware, optimistic timelines, undefined requirements |
| Manufacturability & scale-up | Design for manufacturing, tooling, cost at volume | No DFM, unqualified processes, cost that will not scale |
| Supply chain | Sourcing, qualification, single-source exposure | Sole-source critical parts, no second source, long lead times |
“Study after study puts the failure rate of mergers and acquisitions somewhere between 70% and 90%.”— Harvard Business Review
Technical due diligence is an independent assessment of a target company's technology, intellectual property, engineering organization, and ability to scale from prototype to volume. Investors use it to validate what a founder claims and to price risk before closing. It matters because McKinsey has found that roughly 70% of complex transformation efforts fall short of their goals, and deep-tech bets carry even higher execution risk.
Before term-sheet commitment on any hardware, deep-tech, or engineering-heavy deal, and again before a follow-on round that funds scale-up. The cost of fixing a defect rises sharply the later it is caught: NIST research on software quality has long documented that defects found after release cost many times more than those caught early. Running diligence early surfaces architecture and supply-chain risk while a deal can still be repriced or walked away from.
Hardware and deep-tech diligence covers technology readiness, IP ownership and freedom-to-operate, the engineering team's depth, manufacturability, and the path from lab to volume. Supply chain is central: the World Economic Forum has reported that the large majority of companies experienced supply-chain disruptions in recent years. Prometheus evaluates single-source dependencies, qualification gaps, and tooling maturity that a financial model alone will never reveal.
Most focused engagements run one to three weeks, depending on the complexity of the technology and the quality of the data room. A quick-read assessment can flag go/no-go risks in days; a full lab-to-volume review takes longer. As Harvard Business Review put it, “Due diligence is not about confirming what you already believe; it is about finding what you don't yet know.” Prometheus scopes timelines to the decision deadline.
Common red flags include technology that works only in a controlled lab, undocumented or disputed IP, a team dependent on one irreplaceable engineer, and designs that cannot be manufactured at target cost. Cost and schedule overruns are endemic: Gartner has repeatedly reported that a large share of technology projects exceed budget or miss deadlines. Independent review catches these before capital is committed.
Independent review removes the optimism bias and relationship pressure that shape in-house assessments, and it brings pattern recognition from many prior deals. Deloitte research on M&A has highlighted that integration and operational risk, not headline valuation, drive most deal underperformance. Prometheus provides a confidential, conflict-free read from a former technology executive — complementing, not replacing, your internal team.
Thirty focused minutes. Tell us what's stuck — you'll leave with an honest read on the cause and the path forward, whether or not we work together.
Book a Discovery CallPrometheus takes on a limited number of engagements at a time to stay hands-on. Serious inquiries answered within one business day.