Due diligence checklist for VCs and startup investors 📋💸

Everyone’s funding AI. Almost no one is doing the DD properly 🤖

👋 Hey, Linas here! Welcome to a special issue of my daily newsletter. Each day, I focus on 3 stories that are making a difference in the financial technology space. Coupled with things worth watching & most important money movements, it’s the only newsletter you need for all things when Finance meets Tech. If you’re reading this for the first time, it’s a brilliant opportunity to join a community of 360k+ FinTech leaders:

AI startups are raising capital faster than any sector in history - yet they’re also the easiest to misunderstand, overvalue, or misjudge.

Models can be demo-ready but not deployment-ready. Moats can evaporate overnight. And teams can talk a great game without the infrastructure, governance, or unit economics to back it up.

In a market moving this fast, diligence is no longer just a formality. It’s survival.

That’s why today I’m sharing this brilliant resource I recently came across: a brutally practical, investor-grade due diligence checklist built for the real world of AI, deep tech, and venture-scale startups. It’s designed to help you separate signal from noise, ambition from execution, and storytelling from truth.

If you want to invest smarter - and avoid the hidden liabilities that even seasoned VCs miss - this is the toolkit you need.

Plus, you will get full access to two more valuable DD tools you can use today and save millions.

Let’s dive in: