Startup Boards -- Diligence Process - Team

Hello, this is Hall T. Martin with the Startup Funding Espresso -- your daily shot of startup funding and investing.

Before investing in a startup, it’s important to review the diligence documents, so you understand the business. 

There are three phases to diligence:

1. Documentation diligence
2. Team diligence
3. Domain diligence

Team diligence is the most critical part.  

Gather references for the CEO and call them up to hear what they have to say about the founder, including management style, how they work, and their team dynamics.

In most cases, you’ve heard the CEO pitch, but it’s important to understand the CEO’s skills set, including what is there and what is not.  

Meet with the team and assess their skills.  

It helps to meet the team at their office, so you understand their environment.

The team needs to bring the necessary skills to succeed.

Key questions to ask include:

• What skills are required to be successful?
• What skills are currently in the team?
• What skills are not currently in the team?
• For missing skills, how do we plan to obtain them?
• How long have the team members worked together?
• What projects have they done before?
• How close is the current project to their previous work?
• What other obligations do the team members have for family, social, and other businesses?

In almost every startup failure, the investor can trace it back to the team not being up to the task. 


Thank you for joining us for the Startup Funding Espresso where we help startups and investors connect for funding.

Let’s go startup something today.
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For more episodes from Investor Connect, please visit the site at: http://investorconnect.org 

Check out our other podcasts here: https://investorconnect.org/ 
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On this episode of Investor Connect, Hall welcomes Corey Kupfer, Founder at DealQuest, Host of the DealQuest podcast, Founder and Managing Principal at Kupfer & Associates, and Author of “Authentic Negotiating.”

Corey founded DealQuest to provide courses, retreats, masterminds, and other valuable content designed to support entrepreneurs, high-level executives, and business leaders in achieving their visions and goals through deal-driven growth.

The DealQuest podcast takes you behind the scenes with some of the world’s most fascinating deal-savvy business leaders. This is the one place where they can openly share the secret to deals they have done (or failed to do) and the issues, opportunities, benefits, pitfalls, and lessons learned.

Kupfer & Associates’ focus is on providing the legal insight and counseling needed to advance each client’s business interests.

A successful entrepreneur from the age of 15, Corey is a passionate advocate and leader in the entrepreneurial world; he’s also a renowned strategist on deal-driven growth strategies. Corey has represented, trained, and mentored thousands of companies and entrepreneurs to create leaps in their business growth.

As a member of the New York Chapter of Entrepreneurs’ Organization since 2008, a Board Member since 2010, and Chapter President from July 2014 - June 2016, Corey has been a passionate advocate and leader in the entrepreneurial space.

Corey is a frequent speaker at entrepreneurial, business, and securities industry conferences and events on many topics, including authentic negotiating, deal-making and structuring, entity and platform design, mergers and acquisitions, entrepreneurship, visioning and planning, employee attraction and retention vehicles, authentic conversation about race and building authentic business relationships.

Visit DealQuest at www.coreykupfer.com, and listen to the podcast at www.coreykupfer.com/podcasts/dealquest-podcast-with-corey-kupfer.

Visit Kupfer & Associates at https://kupferlaw.com/ and on LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/company/kupfer-&-associates-pllc.

Reach out to Corey at corey@coreykupfer.com, on LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/coreykupfer/, and on Twitter at www.twitter.com/coreykupfer.  

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For more episodes from Investor Connect, please visit the site at: http://investorconnect.org  

Check out our other podcasts here: https://investorconnect.org/ 
For Investors check out: https://tencapital.group/investor-landing/ 
For Startups check out: https://tencapital.group/company-landing/ 
For eGuides check out: https://tencapital.group/education/ 
For upcoming Events, check out https://tencapital.group/events/  

For Feedback please contact info@tencapital.group   

Please follow, share, and leave a review.

Music courtesy of Bensound.