R&D Due Diligence
Independent assessment of the team, market, product, technology and process: an early-stage startup rating, deal risks and the first action plan.
Review formats
Each stage uses the evidence from the previous one; the investor can stop when the decision is sufficiently supported.
Decide whether the company deserves full technical diligence and receive a comparable early-stage rating.
An independent view of the team, product, technology and ability to execute.
A prioritized post-investment or post-acquisition action plan.
Minimum paid engagement: 3 business days, from RUB 200,000 or the equivalent in another currency. After a short introductory call, scope, deliverables, validation method and price are fixed.
Assessment method
Management statements are compared with employee interviews, operational artifacts and measurements.
Capabilities, accountability, incentives, key employees and single-person dependencies.
Buyer, value, competitors, product state, feedback and roadmap focus.
Scalability, resilience, technical debt, dependencies and feasibility of the future plan.
Idea-to-release path, owners, lead time, automation, release criteria and change management.
Critical scenarios, defects, recovery, quality metrics and support-driver feedback into the product.
Proprietary technology, code ownership, licenses, patent coverage and unprotected inventions.
External dependencies, decision speed, resources and realism of stated timelines.
Real review track record
Reports of 10–15 pages were delivered in 2024–2025. Company names, commercial data and individual findings are not disclosed.
Team, market, performance, scalability, patents, test automation and product-localization risks.
Architecture, foreign-component dependency, release process, scalability, product quality and strategy.
Market, IP risks, testing quality, plugin architecture and a rating revision after additional evidence.
Transition from customer projects to a product, code ownership, open-source model, testing and pilot readiness.
Method foundation
The 2015 guidelines define the 3Ps and team interviews; the 2023 method adds a comparable early-stage startup rating.
Management statements are compared with confidential interviews across the team.
Read article →Team, market potential, innovation, product state and process maturity.
Read article →Comparable assessment
Team, market potential, innovation, product state and process maturity are scored from 1 to 5. The average is translated into a letter rating for comparing investment targets.
Risks and evidence
Evidence quality, deal impact and the key observation are shown separately for each area.
Review output
Primary conclusions, transaction impact and recommended decision.
Severity, evidence, impact, owner and mitigation.
Team, product, architecture, delivery, QA, support, innovation and IP.
Who really owns architecture, delivery and critical knowledge.
Architecture limits, scalability, debt, licensing and technical IP readiness for the transaction.
Priorities, owners and measurable 30/60/100-day outcomes.
Engagement model
Maxim personally owns architecture, critical code, diagnostics and final technical review. Additional engineers or domain specialists are involved only by customer agreement, with roles and accountability defined in advance.
Discuss the review
Include the transaction type, company stage, R&D size, product, primary questions and decision date. This is enough to recommend the appropriate review depth.