Know what you're buying
before you wire the money.
A technical risk memo on the software company you're about to invest in or acquire — signed by a CTO who has sat on both sides of diligence. Built for deals where a €20,000 diligence firm makes no sense but "the founder says it scales" is not good enough.
Money on the line, no technical partner in the room
The buyers a traditional diligence firm cannot serve at a sensible price.
Angels & syndicate leads
Writing a €25k–250k cheque into a software startup. You've never run technical diligence because it costs more than the cheque — so the deck's "proprietary AI" has gone unchallenged.
Acquirers of small software businesses
Search funds, holdcos and individuals buying a $200k–10M SaaS. The broker's diligence covers the P&L. Nobody has asked who actually wrote the code, or what happens to the product if that person leaves.
Small funds without a technical partner
Seed funds and family offices that need an investment-committee-ready technical opinion on a specific company, this week, without a retainer.
Not for you if you're a PE fund with an in-house technical diligence team. You already have this.
A 4–6 page memo you can act on, not a 40-page report you won't read
Written for the person deciding whether to sign, in the order they need to read it.
Read the illustrative sample →- 01Verdict & risk score. Proceed / Proceed with conditions / Walk away, and why in one paragraph.
- 02Red flags. The two to five findings that should change price, structure or terms.
- 03Scorecard. Team & key-person risk · Architecture & scalability · Security & continuity · Cloud cost & unit economics · Data & AI claims · IP & code ownership.
- 04Findings. Each as Claim → Evidence → Risk → Fix, quoting the target's own words from the interview.
- 0530/90-day remediation plan. Written so you can paste it into a term sheet, SPA or 100-day plan.
- 06What we did not verify. The limits of an interview-based review, stated plainly.
Five business days, one link for the target, one call for you
Scope & pay
Fill the intake below. Michael replies within one business day; a 20-minute call confirms the deal fits. You pay via Stripe.
The target's 20 minutes
You forward one link. Their CTO or lead developer takes a structured AI interview. No repository, no credentials, no NDA theatre.
Expert review & follow-up call
Michael reads the transcript and the AI draft, then spends 45 minutes with their tech lead on exactly the areas that looked thin.
Signed memo & debrief
The memo lands within five business days of the target's interview, with a 20-minute debrief call so you can ask the awkward questions.
Two ways to buy. No retainer, no subscription.
Founding price for the first 3 memos, in exchange for a quotable sentence and an anonymised case study. Then €2,500.
- · 20-minute AI interview of the target's tech lead
- · Michael's review of transcript and draft
- · One 45-minute call with their tech lead
- · Signed 4–6 page memo, verdict and fix list
- · 20-minute debrief with you
- · Delivered in five business days
For larger deals or when the target will open the doors. Scoped on the call.
- · Interviews with CTO, lead engineer and founder
- · Read-only repository and infrastructure look, if granted
- · Investment-committee-ready memo
- · Call with your investment committee
- · Post-close 100-day technical plan
Founders screening their own company: the free AI screening is still here and still free.
Michael Petychakis
CTO · angel investor · Athens
Michael is CTO at Dialectica and was previously CTO at Orfium. He invests as an angel, which means he has sat on both sides of technical diligence: as the CTO whose stack was being assessed, and as the investor trying to work out whether the pitch matched the codebase.
badcop.tech is his answer to a gap he kept seeing — deals too small for a diligence firm, but far too large to take the founder's word for it. The AI does the structured interview; he does the judgment and puts his name on the verdict.
Questions investors ask before the first memo
Will the founder or seller agree to be interviewed by an AI?
You forward one link. It's a 20-minute structured conversation with no repository or infrastructure access, and the questions are the ones any serious buyer would ask. A founder who won't spend 20 minutes on it has told you something too.
What if there is no CTO — just the founder and a freelancer?
Then that is the first finding. The interview works with whoever actually understands the system, and the memo will be blunt about key-person risk and code ownership.
Do you look at the code?
Not in the memo. It's built for deals where nobody grants repository access before an LOI. The Deal Review adds a read-only repository and infrastructure look if the target agrees.
How is this different from the free AI screening?
The free screening is a founder assessing their own company. The memo is you commissioning an assessment of someone else's company, reviewed and signed by a person who is accountable for the verdict.
What if you find nothing wrong?
Then the memo says so, with the evidence, and you negotiate from a stronger position. A clean memo is worth as much as a red one.
Why is it so much cheaper than a diligence firm?
The AI runs the structured interview and drafts; Michael spends his hours on judgment rather than transcription. And the deals this is built for don't justify a €20,000 engagement.
Tell us about the deal
Two minutes. Michael reads every intake himself and replies within one business day with a plain yes or no on whether a memo fits.
Prefer to talk first? Book the 20-minute scoping call directly.
No reviews are shown on this site until they are real. The first 3 memos are how they get real.