For Private Equity & Venture Capital
A partner-led commercial diligence and voice of the customer practice for private equity and venture capital technology investors.
You have a target in front of you. You need conviction, not paper.
Lighthouse runs commercial due diligence and Voice of the Customer for PE and VC firms evaluating technology investments. We have run technology businesses ourselves and we sit alongside deal teams, reporting on the issues the partner standing up in IC will need, not the archive.
Engagement profile
Audience
PE & VC
Sector
UK Technology
Delivery
Partner-led
— How it works
A typical CDD engagement.
A conversation with the deal team to understand the thesis and the critical questions. We scope to the answers you need, not a generic template. Four weeks of primary and secondary research, customer interviews, competitive mapping, and model pressure-testing.
Diligence chain
01
— Specificity
We answer the questions that decide the deal.
Not the forty that decide the format. Our sections read like a partner briefing because that is what they are.
02
— Operator Lens
We look at the target the way we would run it.
If the GTM motion breaks at scale, we say so. If the pricing will not survive the second cohort, we say so. If the AI narrative is a slide, we say so.
03
— Partner led
You get a partner on every call, every draft, every hard conversation.
No analyst briefing you on your own deal. No consultant team you have not met before flying in to deliver findings.
— Services for investors
Two deliverables, often used together.
Commercial Due Diligence and Voice of the Customer are separate engagements. They are most powerful when they are commissioned together by the same partner team, looking at the same thesis from two angles.
— CORE SERVICE
Commercial Due Diligence.
Market sizing and growth, customer behaviour and retention, competitive position, and an honest assessment of the target's internal capability to execute the plan. Four weeks. One point of view.
- Pre-IC underwriting
- Post-LOI confirmation
- Bid-stage thesis testing
- Bolt-on screening
Typical scope
4 weeks · partner-led
— Stand-alone or alongside CDD
Voice of the Customer.
Structured interviews with the target's customers. Why they bought, why they stay, why they leave, and what a competitor would have to do to win them. Candid on a call, decisive in committee.
- Retention diagnosis
- Pricing pressure check
- Win/loss patterns
- Retention and NPS drivers
Typical scope
15–30 interviews · partner-led
Used Together
CDD answers the question on paper. VoC answers it in the voices of the people who will determine whether the thesis comes true.
— What to ask any CDD provider
Three questions that separate the real advisers from the factory.
— question one
Who will actually do the work?
Not the partner in the room at kick-off, but the person drafting the customer call notes, building the model, and running the workstream day-to-day. If a different team will be doing the work, you should know now.
why it matters
We are partner-drafted from kick-off to IC. Our analysts support the partner, they do not author the deliverable.
— question two
How have you operated in this sub-sector?
There is a difference between a generalist adviser who has covered SaaS and a partner who has actually run a SaaS business. Ask which they have. Ask for the names. Ask how recent.
why it matters
Operator depth is what separates a thesis-tester from a slide-formatter. Generalists describe markets. Operators predict outcomes.
— question three
Will you tell us something we do not want to hear?
CDD providers who only confirm the thesis are not doing their job. Our reputation is for saying the thing in the room that nobody else will. Ask any partner who has worked with us - that is the line they remember.
why it matters
The single most expensive paragraph in any CDD report is the one that should have been written and was not.
— How it works
How a four-week CDD engagement runs week by week
Commercial Due Diligence and Voice of the Customer are separate engagements. They are most powerful when they are commissioned together by the same partner team, looking at the same thesis from two angles.
WEEK
00
— kick-off
A partner starts working with the deal team.
One call to align on the thesis, the critical questions, and the IC date that everything is calibrated to. We propose tweaks to scope where the standard template would waste your week.
01
— WEEK 01
Market and model framed.
Primary and secondary research underway. Customer list agreed and outreach started. First model pressure-test with the deal team at end of week.
02
— WEEK 02
Interviews running, themes emerging.
Customer interviews in flight. We share emergent themes mid-week, before they become a deck. If the picture is changing, you know in real time, not on page 47 of a draft.
03
— WEEK 03
A partner-led read-out at the mid-point.
A live read-out, not a draft, on what we are seeing. The supporting evidence behind it. A partner answering questions in the room. The work re-aligned for the final fortnight if the thesis has moved.
04
— WEEK 04
A partner-led delivery to the IC, not the archive.
Final deliverable written for IC: cover page with the three questions resolved, the supporting analysis behind each, and the things we cannot resolve flagged honestly. A partner available for the first hard conversation post-vote.
— OUR Track record
A practice built on volume, value and velocity.
100+
CDD & VoC engagements delivered
£2bn+
Aggregate EV diligenced
4 wks
From kick-off to IC-ready
100%
Partner-led, every engagement, every draft
— Where we operate
A focused practice. UK technology, narrowly defined.
We say no to mandates outside our focus. The depth that produces a useful read-out is built on partners who have run businesses in these specific sub-sectors, not browsed them.
FOUNDER- & PE-BACKED
Horizontal SaaS
SCALE-UP & LATER STAGE
B2B & ENTERPRISE
Tech-enabled services
RECURRING REVENUE MODELS
UK, US & EUROPEAN
RECURRING / CONTRACTED
— Next step
Thirty minutes with a partner. Tell us the target. We will tell you what we would look for.
No deck. No pitch. A working conversation with a partner who has run businesses in the sub-sector, NDA signed in advance. If we are the wrong call for this deal, we will say so - and where possible, point you to who is right.