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The Guide to Tech DD

About · Methodology

How we research, source and review.

The Guide is built the way we run diligence: primary evidence first, opinion second, with a named human accountable on every page.

1. Practitioner authorship

Guides are written by the team at Beyond M&A and edited by Hutton Henry, our founder. Twenty years inside tech due diligence, integration and AI-native deal tooling. Built and exited tech businesses, led Tech DD on 150+ deals across PE, corp dev and strategic buyers, and now ships Lens — an AI workspace for diligence teams. Specific deep-dives may carry an individual byline; the default voice is the team. No anonymous contributors, no ghostwritten SEO drops.

2. Source hierarchy

We weight evidence in this order:

  1. Primary deal experience. Frameworks tested across 150+ Tech DD engagements at Beyond M&A.
  2. Practitioner interviews. Direct conversations with PE operators, corp-dev leads and CTOs of targets.
  3. Vendor product documentation. For data-room and AI-tool comparisons, we read the docs and pricing pages, not press releases.
  4. Regulatory and academic sources. Cited inline when a legal or empirical claim depends on them.

3. Review cadence

Every guide carries a visible Last reviewed date. Pages on fast-moving topics (AI in DD, VDR pricing, valuation multiples) are reviewed at least quarterly. Foundational pages (deal process, legal DD) are reviewed annually or when material market events warrant it. Current site-wide review anchor: 20 May 2026.

4. What we won't do

  • Publish vendor-paid placements as editorial.
  • Use AI to generate page bodies without practitioner review.
  • Cite ranges or multiples without saying where they came from.
  • Quietly republish stale guides — material updates are versioned in the page.

5. Conflicts of interest

The Guide is published by Beyond M&A, which also operates Lens. Where a page recommends advisory engagement or AI tooling, the recommendation is editorial — but the commercial relationship is disclosed in the page CTA. Vendor comparisons include Lens on the same scoring rubric as competitors.

6. Corrections

Spot something wrong? Email editorial@beyond-ma.com or DM Hutton Henry on LinkedIn. Material corrections are noted in the page footer.