Legal due diligence, run the way a fund will run it.
Find what the fund’s lawyers will find, while there is still time to fix it quietly. The same request list, the same standards and the same red-flag report — months before anybody is using it to decide your valuation.
Caret’s due diligence simulator is a full legal due diligence exercise run on your own company, using the checklists and standards an investor’s counsel applies at a funding round. You get a graded red-flag report and a prioritised fix list. From €2,000, typically two to three weeks from document access.
What a due diligence simulation includes
The request list a fund actually sends
We work from the diligence checklists investors’ counsel use in practice: corporate records, cap table, IP chain of title, key customer and supplier contracts, employment and contractor arrangements, data protection.
A red-flag report graded like theirs
Findings sorted the way an investor’s lawyer sorts them — deal-blockers, price-adjusters, and things that will merely cost you a week of explaining. Knowing which is which is most of the value.
A cap table stress test
Option grants promised in an offer letter but never formally granted. Overlapping SAFEs on inconsistent terms. A co-founder whose vesting nobody documented. Cap table problems are the most common reason a round slows down.
IP chain of title
Whether the company actually owns what it says it owns: founder assignments, contractor agreements, open-source obligations, and the provenance of anything a model was trained or fine-tuned on.
A fix list in priority order
Not only what is wrong, but what to fix first, what can wait until after the round, and what to simply disclose because fixing it costs more than it saves.
A data room you can hand over
Everything organised the way diligence teams expect to receive it, so the round opens with momentum instead of a fortnight of document archaeology.
How the due diligence simulation runs
A kickoff call, then a document request
Short call to understand the business and the timing, then the request list. Much of what we need already exists somewhere; part of the exercise is establishing what does not.
We read it as adversaries, not advisors
The point is to be the difficult reader. We look for what an investor’s counsel is paid to find, not for reasons to reassure you — that is what makes the output worth anything.
Report, walkthrough, fix list
A written report, a call to go through it properly, and a prioritised list of what to do next — which we can then carry out, or hand to whoever you prefer.
Where would you stand today?
Eight questions covering what investors' counsel actually flags. It takes about a minute, nothing is sent anywhere, and answering honestly is the entire value of it.
Has every founder signed an assignment of IP to the company?
Has every contractor or freelancer who touched the product signed one too?
Have all options promised in offer letters been formally granted and documented?
Is there one current cap table that reconciles with the company register?
If you have issued SAFEs or notes, do you know how they interact on conversion?
Do you know which of your key customer contracts contain change-of-control clauses?
Does everyone working for you have a signed contract in the right category?
Do you have a record of what personal data you process and on what legal basis?
A rough self-assessment, not a legal opinion, and no substitute for someone actually reading your documents.
What legal due diligence costs
Three levels of involvement, priced before we start. The difference between them is how much of the reading a human does, and how much of your time we take up explaining it.
Scan
€2,000
The minimum sensible amount of lawyer.
- Our standard document request list
- Automated review across the usual diligence areas
- A lawyer reads the output and everything it flags
- One call walking through what came up, at a high level
Best if you want to know roughly where you stand before deciding how much to fix.
Review
€5,000
Everything in Scan, read properly by a person.
- A kickoff call to understand the business and the timing
- Human review of every material document, not only the flagged ones
- A written red-flag report, graded the way an investor’s counsel grades
- A prioritised fix list, with an honest view of what can wait
- A results call to go through it all
Best for most companies heading into a first priced round.
Full simulation
€10,000
The whole exercise, run as a fund would run it.
- Everything in Review
- A call at each stage, working through risks as they surface
- Detailed remediation: what to do, in what order, and who does it
- A detailed final memo written to be handed to a board or an investor
Best where the diligence itself is likely to be contested, or the round is large enough that a week of delay is expensive.
These prices assume a group of no more than two companies, under €5M turnover and under 40 employees. Above any of those the work is genuinely bigger, so the price is too — we will tell you what it is before anything begins, not afterwards.
Legal due diligence: common questions
What is a legal due diligence simulation?
A full legal due diligence exercise run on your own company before an investor runs one on you. It uses the same document request list and the same standards an investor’s counsel applies, and produces a report graded the way they grade: deal-blockers, price-adjusters, and things that will merely cost you a week of explaining. The point is to see the findings while you still control the timetable.
When should we run a diligence simulation?
Three to six months before you plan to open a round. That is early enough for founder IP assignments, option paperwork and contractor agreements to be fixed quietly, rather than renegotiated under time pressure with a term sheet already on the table.
How is this different from a normal legal audit?
A legal audit asks whether you comply with the law. A diligence simulation asks what a specific, motivated third party will object to when they are deciding your valuation. The standard is not “is this lawful” but “will this survive someone looking for a reason to reprice”.
What do funds find most often?
Four things recur: missing or unsigned IP assignments from early contractors and freelancers; share options promised in an offer letter but never formally granted; overlapping convertible instruments with inconsistent caps or discounts; and customer contracts containing change-of-control clauses nobody remembers agreeing to.
How long does it take?
Typically two to three weeks from document access to report, depending on how much exists and how findable it is. We give you the timeline before we start, and we tell you if it slips.
What if you find something serious?
Then you have found it on your own schedule instead of theirs, which is the entire point of the exercise. We tell you plainly how serious it is, whether it is fixable, roughly what fixing it involves, and whether disclosure is the better route.
Do you also fix what you find?
Usually, yes — most findings are paperwork that should have existed and now needs to. We scope that separately so you can decide, and there is no obligation to have us do it.
What if we are larger than your stated scope limits?
The published prices assume a group of no more than two companies, under €5M turnover and under 40 employees. Past any of those, the number of entities and documents grows quickly and so does the work, so we quote separately — but still as a fixed figure agreed before we start, rather than switching to hourly billing.
Other things Caret does
We work with startups and SMEs on fixed-scope legal matters, with scope and fee agreed in writing before anything begins.
Second opinion on AI drafts
Your model wrote it and it reads beautifully. Before it goes out, a lawyer checks which parts it got confidently wrong.
SAFE & convertible review
The instrument you’re about to sign, explained line by line: what converts, when, at what price, and what it does to your next round.
Privacy Policy & Terms
Drafted quickly against how your product actually behaves, then reviewed and signed off by a lawyer — not published straight out of a template.
Trademark registration
One EU application covers all 27 member states. We pre-check, choose the classes and file — and refund our fee if the check says you would be refused.