Comments on: A High-tech Entrepreneur’s Guide to Surviving Technical Due Diligence http://blog.pasker.net/2007/08/28/a-high-tech-entrepreneurs-guide-to-surviving-technical-due-diligence/ Thu, 09 Apr 2009 09:44:13 +0000 http://wordpress.com/ hourly 1 By: rbpasker http://blog.pasker.net/2007/08/28/a-high-tech-entrepreneurs-guide-to-surviving-technical-due-diligence/#comment-16 rbpasker Thu, 30 Aug 2007 19:52:09 +0000 http://theabstracttruth.wordpress.com/2007/08/28/a-high-tech-entrepreneurs-guide-to-surviving-technical-due-diligence/#comment-16 Depending on how much chutzpah you have, you should be able to keep the conversation steered in the right direction. Your people, at least, should be trying to keep the discussions on track, but you can't always control the rest of the people in the room. --bob Depending on how much chutzpah you have, you should be able to keep the conversation steered in the right direction. Your people, at least, should be trying to keep the discussions on track, but you can’t always control the rest of the people in the room. –bob

]]> By: NC http://blog.pasker.net/2007/08/28/a-high-tech-entrepreneurs-guide-to-surviving-technical-due-diligence/#comment-14 NC Wed, 29 Aug 2007 19:34:35 +0000 http://theabstracttruth.wordpress.com/2007/08/28/a-high-tech-entrepreneurs-guide-to-surviving-technical-due-diligence/#comment-14 I've been through two tech due-diligence meetings, both of which had me acting as the semi-technical CEO flanked by our CTO and lead developers. I found the biggest challenge was keeping the conversation on topic. Their biz guys were dominating the room with questions that weren't very relevant, and their tech guys wanted to argue the finer points of multi-threaded server architecture rather than dig into what we had built. My agenda must have been weak, because it was constantly being derailed. My tech guys were just as guilty, by engaging all the tangents.. and were defensive every time unknowns were brought up. It was 2000, and we were demonstrating group video conferencing using Flash. It was a first. We had no idea how well it would scale. We had no idea what would happen if we threw it on some great hardware. And there was no reason for the techs to get defensive -- because it was really cool, and we were there to talk about how Macromedia might take the project off our hands and make it into something bigger. Looking back, I should have spent more time prepping the developers before the meeting -- and should have done a better job at moderating the meeting... But how much of that onus should be on the company being "interviewed"? If the the interviewers can't keep on point, are you doomed walking in the door? And how often is this the case that the interviewers are scattered and unprepared? I’ve been through two tech due-diligence meetings, both of which had me acting as the semi-technical CEO flanked by our CTO and lead developers.

I found the biggest challenge was keeping the conversation on topic. Their biz guys were dominating the room with questions that weren’t very relevant, and their tech guys wanted to argue the finer points of multi-threaded server architecture rather than dig into what we had built.

My agenda must have been weak, because it was constantly being derailed. My tech guys were just as guilty, by engaging all the tangents.. and were defensive every time unknowns were brought up.

It was 2000, and we were demonstrating group video conferencing using Flash. It was a first. We had no idea how well it would scale. We had no idea what would happen if we threw it on some great hardware. And there was no reason for the techs to get defensive — because it was really cool, and we were there to talk about how Macromedia might take the project off our hands and make it into something bigger.

Looking back, I should have spent more time prepping the developers before the meeting — and should have done a better job at moderating the meeting…

But how much of that onus should be on the company being “interviewed”? If the the interviewers can’t keep on point, are you doomed walking in the door? And how often is this the case that the interviewers are scattered and unprepared?

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