Reputation due diligence before a funding round
Assume the diligence team runs the searches you have been avoiding. Run them first.
Diligence teams search every founder and executive by name, check litigation and regulatory records, read employee reviews, and increasingly ask assistants for a summary. Run the same checks yourself several months ahead, because the items that cause problems are usually removable with time and almost never removable in the week before a close.
Run their checklist before they do
- Each founder and executive by name, first three pages, plus image results.
- Company name plus the words lawsuit, complaint, investigation, layoffs, fired.
- Litigation and regulatory databases in every state you have operated in.
- Employee reviews, read as a diligence analyst rather than as a manager.
- Two or three assistants asked for a summary of the company and the founders, with sources recorded.
Why timing decides the outcome
Removal work runs on other people's clocks. A data-broker opt-out is weeks. A publisher correction is weeks to months. Sealing a record is months.
None of that compresses because you have a term sheet. Starting three to six months out is the difference between a clean result set and explaining an item in a meeting.
The week before a close, your only remaining option is a good explanation.
What to do about items that cannot move
Some things will not move, and the correct response is not to hope nobody looks. Prepare a short, factual account of the item and the outcome, and give it to the deal team before they find it.
Diligence teams are far more troubled by discovering something themselves than by being told about it. Concealment is the actual risk; the item usually is not.
Common questions
How far back do they look?
As far as search results go, which for a founder can be fifteen years. Recency is not much of a filter.
Do they check AI assistants?
Increasingly yes, as a fast first pass. It is worth knowing what those answers say about you.
What if something surfaces mid-process?
Disclose promptly with the facts and the outcome. Speed and candour matter more than the underlying item in most cases.
Find out if it can come down.
The scan is free and confidential. You get a viability answer on each item, a fixed price, and a timeline. Anything accepted and still published at 14 days is refunded in full.
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Working through this for a business? See Executive reputation management.