Technical Due Diligence Consultant and Advisor
Bespoke for every deal — built for PE firms, VCs, and acquirers. Architecture, team, security, and cost, all hand-verified and IC-ready. Know what you're buying.
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Neil Durbin
I've spent 18 years as an early-stage startup engineer and engineering leader — from first engineer to Director of Engineering.
I was the first engineer at Soylent and iChange (acquired by Herbalife), and joined Honey at 60 people, helping scale the engineering org to 400+ before the $4B PayPal acquisition.
Today I bring that operational experience to bear for investors and acquirers who need to understand what they're buying.
Career
2017–22
Technical Lead
Honey
60 → 400+ engineers · $4B PayPal acquisition
2014–16
Director of Engineering
Soylent
First engineering hire
2008–13
Founding Engineer
iChange
Acquired by Herbalife · $4M
2005–07
MBA
Babson College
F.W. Olin Fellowship
What I Assess
Every engagement covers the areas that matter to the deal. Findings are risk-rated and translated into business terms.
Five pillars, twenty checks
Architecture
5 checks
Where complexity, debt, and boundary decisions compound over time.
Architecture & system design — Where the boundaries sit, and what still crosses them.
Code quality & maintainability — Complexity never spreads evenly. We find where it pools.
Technical debt inventory — Priced in engineer-weeks, ranked against the roadmap it blocks.
Data architecture — Schema integrity, and what the migrations will cost.
API & integration design — Versioning discipline, and what you can never turn off.
Exposure
4 checks
Security, dependencies, and compliance — the risks that surface after close.
Security posture — Layers only count if there is no way around them.
Dependency & supply chain risk — The package you chose is rarely the one that breaks you.
IP & code provenance — You cannot warrant what you cannot trace.
Compliance & regulatory readiness — A written policy is not a control, and a control is not evidence.
Infrastructure
5 checks
What the stack costs to run, scale, and recover when it breaks.
Infrastructure & cloud architecture — Environment parity is a promise most stacks quietly stop keeping.
Scalability & performance — Every system has a knee. The question is where, and what it costs to move it.
Disaster recovery & continuity — The RPO on the slide and the RPO in the runbook are rarely the same number.
Observability & incident response — Most of MTTR is spent before anyone knows there is an incident.
Cloud cost efficiency — The bill is for what you reserved, not what you ran.
Delivery
4 checks
How fast the team ships, and what's really behind that speed.
Test coverage & QA practices — An inverted pyramid is slow, brittle, and expensive to keep green.
DevOps & CI/CD maturity — Deploy speed matters less than how fast you can undo one.
Engineering velocity — The median looks fine. The tail is where the roadmap goes to die.
AI-assisted development usage — Adoption is not the risk. Unreviewed volume is.
People
2 checks
Who holds the knowledge, and what happens if they leave.
Engineering team & key-person risk — Ownership concentrates quietly. Commit history says who you are really buying.
Hiring & team health — Seniority is thin at the top and nothing behind it is ready.
How It Works
A straightforward process designed around your deal timeline.
Scoping Call
15–30 minutes to understand the deal, the target, your thesis, and any specific concerns.
Access & Data Gathering
Codebase access, architecture docs, and a brief technical interview with the engineering team.
Assessment
Typically 1–2 weeks. Deep review across all agreed assessment areas.
Report Delivery
Executive summary, risk-rated findings, remediation roadmap, and IC-ready one-pager.
Debrief
A live walkthrough of findings with your team and any follow-up questions.
FAQ
Get in Touch
The first step is a 15-minute call to understand what you're looking at and whether I'm the right fit.
Book a 15-min intro callEmail: [email protected]
Based in Los Angeles, able to work anywhere in the world.