Financial and commercial diligence establish what a company is today. G2G also asks whether the category conversation being scaled could trap the company between established leaders and upstarts—or reveal the possibility of a stronger position.
The first is whether the product is organized around the right underlying challenge, or the inherited one the category has been answering for years. The second is whether, in an agentic AI environment, the product is something agents will have to operate inside, because data, history, and decision records accumulate here and nowhere else, or a workflow they can replicate from outside.
Both questions are often inferred indirectly through customer calls, product diligence, and management interviews. This framework isolates them explicitly so they can be discussed, tested, and factored into the investment view.
Traditional diligence tests the business inside its current category. It may not establish whether that category hides a structural growth limit or an overlooked opportunity. Either can change the price you should pay and the plan you should underwrite.
The work starts with competing explanations, not a predetermined category reset. We examine what the market, customers and company evidence support.
Reconstruct the original customer challenge, the answers that followed, and how the basis of competition has changed.
Test the asset against category leaders, specialists, upstarts and credible strategic substitutes.
Examine product capabilities, economics, distribution, data, relationships and the investment necessary to pursue another position.
Challenge the thesis with competitive responses, AI substitution risk and the strongest explanation that contradicts it.
A concise, evidence-linked assessment of the current position, plausible upside and structural risk.
The strategic alternatives, their economic mechanisms, likely competitive responses and conditions for success.
The claims to verify, the counter-thesis to test and the implications for underwriting or the value-creation plan.
Proceed, adjust the valuation or investment thesis, redirect diligence, or walk away with a clearer reason.
Know what you are buying beyond the category it is sold in.
An initial conversation establishes fit, urgency and what evidence would make the work worth doing.
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