The work of pre-seed diligence is mostly about making the founder's time pay back. There is rarely a long financial track record to audit, the product is often a prototype, and the market is by definition unproven. What there is, in every case, is a team and a thesis. Most of our work goes into stress-testing both.
This is the playbook we use at T&S Capital. It is the version we share with founders so they know what to expect, and with mentors and reviewers so the work is reproducible.
Stage 1, screening
Every application starts with a short founder-completed form. We ask for the company name, sector, stage, target raise, what the money will fund, and the team. We deliberately do not ask for a pitch deck at this stage. The decision at Stage 1 is whether we want to spend more of everyone's time. A pitch deck does not improve that decision much.
A staff reviewer reads the application within two working days and either invites the founder to Stage 2 or declines with a short explanation. Around 30% of applications progress.
Stage 2, the data pack
If invited, the founder uploads a short data pack: a deck, the cap table, a one-page financial model, and any product or traction evidence. The pack has a 14-day window. If it does not arrive in time, the application expires and the founder can reapply.
We do not require a fundraise to be open before Stage 2. We do require the founder to have a clear answer to what the next 18 months look like and what each pound of new capital is for.
Diligence proper
Once the data pack is in, we run diligence on five axes. Each axis is scored independently by a reviewer, with a written rationale.
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Founder fit and operating history. What have they shipped before. What was the outcome. What did they learn. We score this on track record and on the depth of the reflection, not just the headline.
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Market shape. Size, structure, and rate of change. We are looking for a market that is large enough or growing fast enough to support a venture outcome, but not so well-trodden that the incumbents have already locked in.
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Product and technical risk. What needs to be true for the product to work. What is already proven. What is still hypothesis. We are happy with high technical risk if the founder can articulate it precisely.
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Round structure and economics. Is the round priced reasonably for the stage. Are SEIS and EIS preserved. Is the cap table clean. Are there terms that would make follow-on difficult.
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Compliance and conduct. Sanctions and PEP screening on directors and material shareholders, basic source-of-wealth checks on lead angels, and a sense-check on any prior regulatory or insolvency history.
A score of 3 out of 5 on each axis is the working threshold for committee. Anything below 3 on any single axis is a hard stop until it is resolved.
Committee
The committee meets weekly. It has three voting members and at least one observer. Each opportunity is presented by the lead reviewer in twelve minutes, with five minutes of questions. The committee votes pass, fail, or refer.
Pass means we will introduce the opportunity to certified investors. Fail means we will not, and we tell the founder why in writing. Refer means we have a specific question we need answered before we can vote.
Why the playbook matters
Founders ask, often, what they can do to make diligence go faster. The honest answer is that the work above takes about twenty hours when everything is in good order, and it takes much longer when it is not. The single best preparation a founder can do is to have a clean cap table, a precise account of what the money will fund, and a willingness to answer hard questions about the things they have tried and the things that have not yet worked.
The rest, we do.