What technical documentation do investors ask for? My answer is five documents in one PDF: a readiness report with a row per check and the failures left visible, an architecture diagram, the data model, a security checklist with evidence, and a capacity statement. Technical documentation for investors is that pack; other files get opened when a row points to them.
Technical documentation for investors: the readiness report and the pack, together
A readiness report and the pack around it are the technical documentation an investor’s reviewer reads. The report has one row per check with the result, the evidence and the date; the pack adds the architecture diagram, the data model, the security checklist with evidence and a capacity statement, all naming the same version.
The pack is one part of what a finished handover leaves behind; the rest of what a developer handoff looks like runs from accounts to access. Of everything handed over, this is the slice a stranger can check without running the app.
What is considered technical documentation in a funding review is narrower than a team’s docs folder: a document a reviewer can check against the code at one stated version. The table lists the five documents. The last column is my reading of what a reviewer looks for in each one, not a published standard.
| Document | What it contains | What the reviewer checks in it |
|---|---|---|
| Readiness report | A row for each check: its id, the outcome, a link to proof and when it ran | Failures first, then the not-applicable reasons, then a few passes at random |
| Architecture diagram | What runs where, how data moves between parts, which outside services the app calls | Whether it matches the repository at the version the pack names |
| Data model | Tables, the relationships between them, which roles can read or write each one | Where customer data sits and what protects it |
| Security checklist with evidence | One row per control, each with a link to proof | Whether each link opens and shows what the row claims |
| Capacity statement | The load the app was tested at and what slowed first | Whether the test resembles the traffic in the growth plan |
A readiness report is a report with one row per check, its result, its evidence and its date, where a failure stays visible until it is fixed. To document engineering work for reviewers, link the evidence: the link is the documentation, and a sentence saying the work was done is not. To verify that every scope item has evidence, count the report’s rows against the checklist and open a few links; the section on verifying each one, further down, has the steps.
In the technology workstream, due diligence documents are these five, plus the license report and the runbooks; across a whole deal they also cover the financial, legal and operational records. That table and the report’s row format below are the whole template for technical documentation for investors, and nothing here needs a download. For an example, the three filled rows under the report template heading show what that technical documentation looks like to investors at row level.
The checklist the report fills in is the production readiness checklist; the license report comes out of license scanning; the reviewer’s seat and the red flags they watch for belong to what investors look for in code.
In the Production Hardening Sprint these are deliverables 13.1 and 13.6. The production readiness report delivers the result for every scope item, the work completed, and its verification evidence, because engineering work needs a record your team and reviewers can inspect. The technical due diligence pack bundles the readiness report, architecture diagram, data model, security checklist, and capacity statement into one PDF, because technical reviewers need an organized evidence pack rather than scattered files.
The due diligence checklist, and the templates everyone downloads
A checklist for due diligence, as deal platforms and legal resources offer it, is a legal and financial list: Dealroom’s checklist, in sections from legal and financial to real estate, and CAPLAW’s sample for a community action agency weighing a merger or shared services with another organization.
CAPLAW’s sample has no technology section at all: its headings run from organizational documents and governance through tax, contracts, HR, property, intellectual property and risk management. Dealroom’s nine numbered sections have none either, and technology shows up as one of four items under property, plant and equipment. Its interactive version does group IT with IP in one category of seven items, among them source code repository access, a cybersecurity assessment and an IT infrastructure overview.
In my reading, every version of the download has the same shape: rows grouped by workstream, with a technology row or two at most. A due diligence checklist template, free or paid, is that list with blank cells. A sample due diligence checklist is the same list with example rows, and a basic due diligence checklist trims it for a small deal. Calling it a due diligence audit checklist, or saving it as a due diligence checklist in Excel or a PDF, changes the file, not the questions.
A KPMG due diligence checklist, on KPMG’s own pages, is a list of services rather than a document list: KPMG Australia’s due diligence page names commercial, operational, financial, tax, ESG, technology, AI and cyber, and HR and employment due diligence. An IT due diligence PDF from a firm is, in my reading, the same list with a longer IT section. A due diligence checklist for acquisition is the M&A list again. A business due diligence checklist for buying a company is the buyer’s list, and the buyer’s version for an AI-built app is due diligence when buying an AI-built app. The software checklist itself, item by item, is the software due diligence checklist; the five documents above are the evidence those lists ask for.
What goes wrong without them
The three failures below are the ones a missing or loose pack invites, in my reading. Each has a check you can run before anyone else does.
| Symptom | Likely cause | First check |
|---|---|---|
| The report marks every row done but has no evidence column, so the reviewer concludes there is no evidence the work was actually done | The report was written from memory | Does every row have a link? |
| Documents sit across a wiki, a drive and a chat, so whoever has to review the evidence pack for missing documents finds a gap on the first pass | There is no single pack | Is there one file with a contents list? |
| The diagram names a version the repository no longer has | The documents were written at different times | Does every document carry the same version line? |
Take a founder who sends an investor’s reviewer a folder: a readiness summary marking every item done, an architecture diagram and a link to the team wiki. The reviewer finds items marked done with no evidence behind them, and a diagram that names a different version from the repository, and writes both down as unverified. A reviewer reads what the documents prove, not what they say, so a row without an evidence link reads as not done, whatever it says.
An audit of a software company, in the general sense, looks at the business’s code, security, money or operations for risk. Seen from the reviewer’s chair in a funding round, much of the technical half is a hunt for exactly these three gaps (my reading). The seller’s side of the same review is due diligence of code when selling a business, and for the word itself, start with the definition of due diligence.
How to set them up
Build the report first, then the pack around it.
The readiness report: the row format
My working format for the report, in six rules:
- 01 One row per check, keyed by the check id from the checklist the report covers, with a line on what was checked.
- 02 The result, written as pass, fail or not applicable, and nothing in between.
- 03 An evidence link on every pass and every fail: a test record, a screenshot or a config export.
- 04 The date the check was run, so the reader can see how fresh the evidence is.
- 05 A written reason on every not-applicable row, saying why the check does not apply to this product.
- 06 Failures kept in the report until they are fixed, then marked with the fix date instead of deleted.
How I expect a reviewer to read it: every failure, then each not-applicable reason, then a handful of passes chosen at random to see whether their links hold up. A report with no failures at all tends to get a closer look at its passes. The process from the founder’s side, and what the reviewer sends before any of this, is in startup technical due diligence.
The due diligence pack: contents, order and version references
Seven items, in this order:
- 01 The readiness report, first, with its summary by area on top.
- 02 The architecture diagram, showing what runs where and what talks to what.
- 03 The data model: tables, relationships and which roles can read or write each one.
- 04 The security checklist, with an evidence link for every control.
- 05 The capacity statement, with the tested load and the first thing to slow down.
- 06 One PDF, with a version line on every document naming the same commit and the same date.
- 07 Evidence links that open with the access the reviewer is given: read access to a private repository or dashboard, or the evidence copied into the PDF.
Each part has its own method: how to create an architecture diagram for the diagram, MVSP and the controls checklist for the security checklist, and what a capacity plan is for the capacity statement.
Security evidence never goes behind a public link; that is my working rule. On GitHub, “Collaborators can’t have read-only access to repositories owned by a personal account”: in a private repository there, the owner can only grant write access to collaborators. A repository owned by an organization can give an outside collaborator the Read role, so either move the repository into an organization or copy the evidence into the PDF.
The handover document that lists the pack is the software project handover checklist, and the supporting write-up of how the app works is how to write technical documentation for a vibe-coded app.
A technical due diligence report template, with a filled-in example
A technical due diligence report template is a table: check id, what was checked, the result, an evidence link, the date, and a written reason on every not-applicable row. Three filled rows show the whole format: a pass with its evidence, a fail with its fix date, and a not-applicable with its reason.
The rows below are a due diligence report example made up to show the format. They are an illustration, not findings from a real app.
| Check id | What was checked | Result | Evidence | Date | Reason if not applicable |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| admin-routes | A signed-out request and an ordinary account’s request to each admin route | Pass | Saved requests and responses, linked | Run date | |
| backup-restore | A restore of the latest backup into a scratch database | Fail, then fixed (fix date recorded) | Restore log and the commit that fixed it | Run date | |
| subscription-reconciliation | Subscription records match the payment provider | Not applicable | Run date | The app sells one-off purchases only and has no subscriptions |
How to make a due diligence report from this: write the rows first, in this format, and put the summary by area on top once every row has a result. A due diligence report should include four parts: the rows, the summary, a version line naming the commit, and the not-applicable reasons. There is no download: a technical due diligence report sample in PDF form, for a technology review or any other, is this table exported with its summary on top. An IT technical report template works the same way, because the columns are the template.
The DDQ: what it asks and how to answer it
A DDQ is a due diligence questionnaire: a fixed set of questions an investor or buyer sends before committing. Where its technology questions ask for evidence the pack already holds, each answer can be one line and a pointer to the page of the pack that proves it.
What DDQ means is fixed by the letters, due diligence questionnaire; what it asks depends on who sends it. In a DDQ example, as in any due diligence questionnaire example, the rows that matter to this pack are the technology rows, covered next.
The technology rows of a DDQ questionnaire are where the pack pays off, in my reading. Answer each with one line of fact that ends on the pack page and row it rests on, and attach nothing new. A due diligence form template for the same purpose is the questionnaire with the answer cells left blank. The customer security questionnaire a buyer of your product sends is a different document, covered by security questionnaire examples.
Cyber security due diligence: what a reviewer reads, and the evidence to have ready
Cyber security due diligence on a small app mostly reads two documents: the security controls checklist with an evidence link per control, and the security audit report with its critical findings and their fixes. A reviewer starts with the criticals and whether each fix was retested, then follows a few evidence links at random.
Due diligence in cyber security, as I define it, is the buyer’s or investor’s check of how the product is protected, read from its documents and its code. That due diligence meaning in cyber security is narrower than the cyber due diligence that firms sell as a service. Vaultinum, for one, publishes a page on cybersecurity due diligence that offers its own cybersecurity due diligence experts.
The evidence to have ready is the controls checklist with a link per control, and the report from a web application security audit if one has been done, showing the critical findings, the fixes and the retests. The cybersecurity report template I would use is that audit’s report table, and a cyber security audit report example in PDF form is the same table exported.
The technology audit checklist a reviewer works through
A technology audit checklist, read from the reviewer’s side, asks one question of every area of the app: what is the evidence, and when was it produced. It covers the same ground as a production readiness checklist; the difference is that the reviewer marks a row without evidence as not done.
For a general IT estate, I would group the rows under six headings: asset management and inventory, access control and identity, security and vulnerability management, data protection and privacy, backup and disaster recovery, and policies and compliance. Pointed at one system, that list becomes an IT system audit checklist; run on a schedule, it becomes an IT health check checklist.
For a small AI-built app, the technology audit template is the readiness report’s summary table, read area by area. A short tech audit template can stop there, while an engineering audit checklist goes one level down, into tests, dependencies and the deploy path. The full list by area is the production readiness checklist linked earlier. What a reviewer finds when reading the repository itself belongs to the startup technical due diligence article linked above, under its heading on what a technical reviewer finds in an AI-built codebase.
How to verify each one
The readiness report is verified by counting its rows against the checklist and reading every failure and every not-applicable reason; the pack by checking that every document names the same version and that the evidence links open with only the reviewer’s access. A stranger’s first question shows what is still missing.
Four checks, each one a reader can run and fail:
- 01 Count the report's rows against the checklist it claims to cover. Evidence: the two counts match.
- 02 Read every failure and every not-applicable reason. Evidence: a written reason on every not-applicable row, and a fix date or an open status on every failure.
- 03 Check the version line on every document in the pack. Evidence: one commit and one date, the same on all of them.
- 04 Open three evidence links while signed in as someone with only the access the reviewer will be given: a colleague's own account given just that access, or a private browser window for evidence copied into the PDF or a shared file. Evidence: each link opens with that access alone.
About three links is my working rule for the last check, roughly enough to catch a pattern without turning it into an afternoon. Evidence in a private repository or dashboard passes when the reviewer is granted read access, which on GitHub means a repository owned by an organization; security evidence is never made public to pass this check.
Then the stranger test: hand the pack to someone who has never seen the app and write down their first question. Whatever they ask first is the gap the pack has not closed.
In the sprint, we verify deliverable 13.1 this way: “Account for all 123 IDs; keep failures visible until resolved and explain genuine non-applicable items.” Deliverable 13.6 is verified by checking the pack for completeness, consistent version references, and readable linked evidence.
Where the sprint does this
Both documents arrive at handover alongside the updated codebase, tests, and deployment configuration; instructions for releases, backups, recovery, and incident response; guidance and automated checks for future AI-assisted changes; and a recorded 60-minute handover and a 20-30-minute codebase tour. A control that does not apply to the product is marked with a written reason. Days 8-10 of the ten working days are for verifying and handing over. Formal third-party certifications and independent audit opinions are separate from these engineering deliverables. Every deliverable, with its verify line, is listed in the published scope of the sprint.
Common questions about due diligence documents
What is a DD checklist?
A DD checklist is a due diligence checklist: the list of documents a buyer or investor asks for, grouped by workstream. For the technology workstream of a small software company, the list is short: the documents that prove the product works and is protected, each with a version line.
Can you provide an example of a due diligence report?
Yes. As a made-up illustration in three rows: an admin-route check that passed, with the saved requests linked; a backup restore that failed and now carries the date it was fixed; and a subscription check marked not applicable because the app sells no subscriptions. Each row also carries the date it was run.
What should be included in a due diligence checklist?
For technology, include one row for each document the reviewer will open: the readiness report, architecture diagram, data model, security checklist and capacity statement, plus the license report and the runbooks, each with an owner. Legal and financial items sit in their own workstreams.
How to create a due diligence checklist?
Start from the questions the reviewer will ask, then write one row per document that answers them. Give each row an owner and a date, so a gap shows up as a name and a deadline instead of a surprise.
How do you write a due diligence report?
Write one row per check, put the evidence link in before the result, and leave failures visible until they are fixed. Add the summary by area last, once every row has a result.
What is the standard format for a due diligence report?
There is no single standard format; mine is a table with six columns (check id, what was checked, result, evidence link, date, and the reason on any not-applicable row) plus a version line naming the commit. The details change with who runs the review.
What documents do investors need?
For the technical review, investors need five documents in one PDF: a readiness report, an architecture diagram, the data model, a security checklist with evidence and a capacity statement. A full deal review also asks for the company’s accounts, contracts and legal records, which sit outside the technical review.
What are some examples of due diligence documents?
On the technology side, the readiness report and the architecture diagram come first, with the data model, security checklist, capacity statement, license report and runbooks behind them. The financial and legal workstreams add accounts, contracts and corporate records.
Owning an app means being able to run it, change it and recover it without guessing. The sprint below leaves you with the runbooks and documentation to do that.
Built it with AI. Now it has to hold up for real customers.
The Production Hardening Sprint takes the app you already have and builds the production foundation underneath it. Authentication and access rules, payments that stay consistent, error handling, monitoring, backups, automated tests and a documented handover. Our engineers work inside your existing codebase for ten working days. All 123 deliverables are included, and you get the evidence for each one.
See the Production Hardening Sprint → 
$2,500 fixed price · 10 working days · One codebase