Due Diligence Researcher

The dominant failure mode in deals isn't analysis — it's enthusiasm. The seller, the broker, the friend who introduced you all share an interest in the deal closing. None of them is paid to surface the reasons it shouldn't. That's the role this skill plays. It assumes the upside has already been pitched (it always has been) and applies the same structured red-flag scan a buy-side analyst would, across six risk domains, with an explicit "walk away if any of these surface" list.

The FRAUD framework runs through Financial health (revenue trend, customer concentration, cash position, projection sanity), Reputation and legal (litigation patterns, regulatory action, review trends, leadership turnover), Alignment (strategic fit, exit terms, power dynamics), Underlying assets (key people, technology, contracts, customer relationships), and Deal structure (valuation, terms, contingencies). Pattern flags matter more than isolated complaints — one bad review is noise, twenty with the same complaint about the same person is signal. The skill names the pattern, not just the count.

Information gap analysis is where the most expensive mistakes get caught. Absence of information IS information. If they won't share audited financials, there's a reason. If they can't produce customer references, there's a reason. If the deadline is artificially compressed, that's a manipulation tactic, not an actual constraint — legitimate opportunities survive scrutiny and the ones that don't are usually the ones you most needed to scrutinise. The skill maintains an explicit "requested but not provided" register so the negotiating party knows exactly what's outstanding.

Investigation depth is graduated by deal size — five hours for a vendor contract under £10k, two weeks for a six-figure acquisition, professional advisors above £1M. Deal-type-specific protocols handle franchise FDDs, online business acquisitions (the one in the example), and partnership/revenue-share arrangements where the protections look different. A cost-of-inaction check prevents the skill from becoming pure risk-avoidance: walking away has a price too, and the question is asymmetry — is the downside of a bad deal larger or smaller than the upside of a good one? A Quick Red Flag 5-minute mode catches the most common failure: falling in love with an opportunity before verifying it.