Over-diligence on a small cheque burns the relationship and the calendar. Under-diligence on a large one is how funds acquire problems they cannot unwind. The work should be proportionate to the money at risk and to the evidence the company can actually produce.
In short
Angel cheques warrant days of work: founders, a live product, the cap table and the bank balance. Seed warrants two to four weeks across all seven pillars at document depth. Series A warrants four to eight weeks with retention reconciled to invoices and external counsel engaged. Series B and later warrants audited statements and confirmatory legal work. Anything beyond the band you are in is usually theatre.
Cheque size is a starting point, not a rule. A small cheque into a regulated lender deserves more legal work than a large one into a pre-revenue tools company; a fund's own concentration, reserve strategy and reputation exposure move the line too. The bands above set the default; the deal moves it.
The item-level detail sits in the 99-point checklist. For India-registered targets, add the India evidence layer, and see how the findings get written up in the memo teardown.
Right-size the work
Run the deck and supporting files through the adversarial passes first, then spend your own hours on the questions it surfaces.
Velocity, reconciliation, defensibility, red team, and governor — each reads the same evidence separately.
Verdict, scores, and the reasoning behind each, written for an investment committee rather than a dashboard.
Where the deck disagrees with itself or with the supporting documents, quoted rather than summarised.
The output is fingerprinted and time-locked, so the version the committee read can be re-checked later.
5 evaluations are free, no card required. Zurvek is a decision-support system — verdicts are analytical, not advisory.
