The read before you wire.
Independent, fixed-price diligence for family offices and private investors doing direct venture deals without an in-house venture team. A written verdict on a fixed clock, from someone who's built technology for 25 years, runs a seed fund, and takes nothing from the founder.
The deal you're already leaning toward, read by someone only you pay. No consultant's report, no gut call.
- 01IP assignment from the founders' prior employer
- 02A paying customer outside the founders' network
- 03Round label matched to the actual pre-money
What Olivent Diligence is
Olivent Diligence is an independent, fixed-price due diligence service for family offices, multi-family offices, RIAs and angel groups that invest directly in startups without an in-house venture team. It is run by Adam Yohanan, Managing Partner of Olivent Venture Capital, and is paid only by the investor, never by the company under review. A Pre-Wire Screen costs $2,500 and is delivered in 48 hours; a Full Diligence costs $8,500 and is delivered in 5 business days.
- Service
- Independent due diligence on private startup investments
- For
- Family offices, multi-family offices and RIAs, angel groups and syndicate leads, investors in Israeli companies
- Paid by
- The investor only. Never the founder, never contingent on whether you invest
- Pre-Wire Screen
- $2,500, 48 hours
- Full Diligence
- $8,500, 5 business days
- Deliverable
- A one-page verdict memo with sourced evidence and a 20-minute debrief
- Led by
- Adam Yohanan, Managing Partner, Olivent Venture Capital
- Based
- Dallas and Tel Aviv
Built for investors who write the check without a venture team.
Deals arrive through friends, the deck is the diligence, and the cost of a bad check is the whole check. A proper read costs one to three percent of it.
Single family offices doing directs
Three or more direct private investments a year, typically $100K to $2M a check. A CIO or principal makes the call, and nobody in-house can read a cap table, a technical architecture, or an IIA grant agreement.
Multi-family offices, RIAs, wealth advisors
Clients bring you directs and ask for a view. You carry the relationship risk but can't do the work. The memo is the written answer, and the liability cover.
Angel groups, syndicate leads, small funds
Screening on volunteer time, distributing memos to backers, or needing surge capacity on a co-invest. Sold per deal or as a group license rather than a retainer.
The Israeli corridor, both directions
US investors looking at Israeli companies who need someone who reads IIA transfer restrictions, Section 102 plans, Delaware flips and reservist realities. Israeli investors looking at US deals who want a US-based GP's read on terms and market.
Staying independent means turning work away. These get declined in writing, every time.
- 01Founders or companies wanting diligence on themselves. Declined every time. That's where the conflicts start.
- 02Institutions with an in-house venture team. You already have the read.
- 03Private equity, real estate, and public market investors. Outside the edge.
- 04Anyone who wants the memo to say yes.
Every engagement produces the same memo.
Same format every time, so your team learns to read it fast and passes it around. The product is the verdict and the three things that would change it. The evidence is there so you can check the verdict.
The verdict
One of four words, on page one. Never buried in a conclusion.
Three things that would change it
What new fact, document or call would move the verdict, and in which direction.
The cheapest experiment before wiring
A reference call, a document request, a technical test. The one thing to do this week.
Three-axis score
Business, integrity, and fit to your stated criteria. Scored independently, so a great business with a founder problem reads as exactly that.
Red flags first. Every claim sourced.
If a claim can't be sourced, it's labeled as inference or it stays out. If it isn't built, it doesn't get credit. Delivered as a branded PDF with a 20-minute debrief call.
Request the redacted sample memoFixed price. Fixed clock.
A Full Diligence at $8,500 is 3.4 percent of a $250K check and under one percent of a $1M check. The Screen exists so there's always a yes available: $2,500 to find out whether the deal deserves the full read.
Pre-Wire Screen
Stage 1 screen only: a six-section structured verdict, the top red flags, and a go / no-go on whether the deal deserves deeper work.
Order the ScreenFull Diligence
The full two-stage pipeline, nine-expert council review, the complete memo, and a 20-minute debrief call.
Order the Full DiligenceDoing more than one deal a quarter? Core costs less than two ad hoc reads.
Capacity is capped at four to five retainers so turnaround never slips. Monthly, in advance.
Core
- One Full Diligence or three Screens per month
- On call for term-sheet and follow-on questions, up to 2 hours a week
- Memo archive access
Partner
most_common- Two Full Diligence per month, unlimited Screens
- Monitoring for up to five portfolio companies
- Quarterly portfolio review call
Anchor
- Four Full Diligence per month, 72-hour priority turnaround
- Participation in founder calls and a seat in your investment discussions
- Monitoring for up to ten companies
- Unused memos roll over one month, then expire. This is a standby service, not a bank.
- Minimum term three months, then month to month with 30 days' notice.
- Annual prepay: 10 percent off.
- Founding client rate: the first five retainer clients lock 20 percent off for 12 months in exchange for a testimonial and a reference call.
- Ad hoc work is paid upfront and starts on payment. Retainers are billed monthly in advance, or yearly with the annual prepay.
Independent, structurally.
Adam runs a seed fund and holds no securities registrations. What keeps the practice clean is that these seven rules are absolute. A disclaimer wouldn't do it. Any request for an introduction fee is declined in writing.
- Not a broker, placement agent, or fundraising advisor. Never compensated by the company being reviewed, never compensated on whether money moves.
- Not a legal, tax, or valuation opinion. Those are referred out; the memo says where they are needed.
- Not a generalist consultancy. No strategy decks, no market studies without a deal attached.
- Not investment advice. You make the decision; the memo is the research that informs it.
Engagements run under a one-page letter: scope, confidentiality both ways, the disclosures above, liability capped at fees paid, Texas law. Client owns the memo.
How it compares to what you already have.
Most direct investors already have a lawyer, a network and a chatbot. Each of them answers part of the question. None of them answers whether to wire.
| alternative | what it covers | what it misses |
|---|---|---|
| Your lawyer | what it coversThe documents: charter, SAFE or purchase agreement terms, reps and warranties, closing conditions. | what it missesWhether the technology exists, whether the round label matches the price, whether the founder's story holds up, whether the deal is worth doing. |
| A background-check firm | what it coversIdentity, criminal and civil records, sanctions lists and adverse media on named individuals. | what it missesThe business, the technology and the terms. A founder with a clean record can still run a company that shouldn't be funded. |
| An AI tool or ChatGPT | what it coversA fast summary of the deck and the public web, and a first list of questions. | what it missesPrimary-source verification, a discipline that separates fact from inference, and anyone accountable for the answer. Its failure mode is that it looks right. |
| A founder-paid diligence report | what it coversA packaged report the company commissions and hands to every prospective investor. | what it missesIndependence. The party paying for the report is the party being judged. |
| Doing it yourself or with your angel group | what it coversYour own judgment on the market and the people, at no cash cost. | what it missesTime, and the specific skills: reading a codebase, a cap table, an Israel Innovation Authority grant agreement or a Section 102 option plan. |
| Olivent Diligence | what it coversA verdict on the whole deal, scored on business, integrity and fit, from a GP who reads code, with every claim sourced and a named person accountable for it. | what it missesLegal, tax and valuation opinions. The memo says where you need one and what to ask. |
Intake to debrief, in five business days.
The pipeline is already built and has run on live deals. It's fast because the structure is fixed. Steps don't get skipped, least of all the human review at the end.
Intake
Deck, data room, term sheet or SAFE, cap table if you have it, and your own criteria: check size, sector, stage, what you care about. Plus anything you've already done, so nobody repeats it.
Stage 1 screen
A structured six-section screen. If you bought a Pre-Wire Screen, this is it, formatted and delivered inside 48 hours.
Deep dive and council
Seven-area investigation, then a nine-expert adversarial review scoring business, integrity and fit independently.
Human review, memo, debrief
Every HIGH red flag re-verified against primary sources by Adam, every inference labeled. Branded PDF, then a 20-minute call walking the verdict.
The questions everyone asks.
- What is Olivent Diligence?
- Olivent Diligence is an independent, fixed-price due diligence service for family offices, multi-family offices, RIAs and angel groups that invest directly in startups without an in-house venture team. It is run by Adam Yohanan, Managing Partner of Olivent Venture Capital, and is paid only by the investor, never by the company under review. A Pre-Wire Screen costs $2,500 and is delivered in 48 hours; a Full Diligence costs $8,500 and is delivered in 5 business days.
- We do our own diligence. Why would we need this?
- Then this is the second read on the deals you're least sure about. Send the one you're stuck on. Most clients find at least one thing in the first memo they didn't have.
- You run a fund. Aren't you conflicted?
- Every memo carries a written disclosure of whether Olivent has looked at the company or holds a position. Olivent Diligence takes nothing from the founder, ever, and isn't paid on whether you invest. The judgment you're paying for is the same judgment Adam uses with his own money.
- Can't I just do this with AI?
- You can, and you'll get a fluent, confident answer. What you won't get is a sourcing discipline that separates verified fact from inference, a structured adversarial review, or someone accountable who has read cap tables and codebases for 25 years. The trouble with an AI-only read is that it looks right.
- Isn't $8,500 expensive?
- Against what? On a $250K check, a Full Diligence is 3.4 percent of it. On a $1M check it's under one percent. A bad check costs you the whole check. If the number's still a stretch, start with a $2,500 Pre-Wire Screen and find out whether the deal deserves the full read.
- We don't have a deal right now.
- Then start with monitoring on what you already hold, at $750 per company per month. When the next deal comes, the intake and the criteria are already set up.
- Our lawyer does this.
- Your lawyer checks the documents. Nobody checks whether the technology exists, whether the round label matches the pricing, or whether the IP sits in the entity that is raising.
- How much does independent due diligence on a startup cost?
- Olivent Diligence is fixed-price: $2,500 for a Pre-Wire Screen in 48 hours, $8,500 for a Full Diligence in five business days, with add-ons for a technical deep dive ($5,000), a team and integrity investigation ($3,500) and an Israel structure review ($3,000). Scope sets the price. Your check size doesn't change it, and the founder pays nothing.
- How long does due diligence take before a seed investment?
- Venture firms typically take weeks to months from first meeting to close. An investor without a team usually has days, because the round is already filling. Olivent Diligence is built for that window: a verdict on page one in 48 hours for a Screen, the full memo and a debrief call in five business days.
- Can you diligence an Israeli startup for a US investor?
- Yes, it's a specialty. The Israel Structure Review covers the entity chain and whether the company has flipped to Delaware, Israel Innovation Authority grant obligations and what they do to an IP transfer or an exit abroad, Section 102 option plans, and what the local investors on the cap table signal. Adam is based between Dallas and Tel Aviv and reads the Hebrew documents.
- What does the client provide?
- The deck, data room access, the term sheet or SAFE, the cap table if available, your stated criteria, a founder contact if the engagement includes a call, and any prior work so nobody repeats it. Handing over a deal takes about five minutes.
- Is the memo investment advice?
- No. It's independent research on a specific company. It isn't investment, legal, tax, or accounting advice, and the decision to invest is yours alone. Where a legal, tax, or valuation opinion is needed, the memo says so.
Longer answers, sourced and dated
- How to read a startup cap table before you invest, and check the round label against the priceBefore you invest, check four things on a startup's cap table: fully diluted ownership, what every SAFE and note does when it converts, how big the option pool will be and who pays for it, and whether the round label matches the price. Here's how to read each one, with current Carta and PitchBook-NVCA medians for seed and Series A.updated September 24, 2026
- How to verify a startup founder's background before you investTo verify a founder's background, check each claim against sources the founder didn't write: company registries, federal and state court records, SEC filings, sanctions lists, and references the founder didn't offer. Below are the US and Israeli sources, what they cost, and where consumer-report rules mean you need the founder's consent.updated September 24, 2026
- What a lawyer's due diligence covers on a startup investment, and what it missesA lawyer's due diligence on a startup investment checks that the company is properly formed, its shares were validly issued, it owns its IP and its contracts carry no hidden liability. It doesn't test whether the technology works, customers pay, the price fits the stage or the founders' story holds up. Here's where the split falls and where losses start.updated September 24, 2026
- Due diligence duties when an RIA or family office adviser reviews a client's direct startup dealAn investment adviser who gives a client a view on a direct startup investment owes a fiduciary duty of care. The SEC says that requires a reasonable investigation, so the advice isn't based on materially inaccurate or incomplete information. This guide covers the SEC's 2019 interpretation, what examiners have found, FINRA's benchmark, and what a defensible written record contains.updated September 24, 2026
- How to monitor a startup after you investMonitoring a startup after you invest means collecting the information you're entitled to, watching the outside signals the company won't report (hiring, departures, filings, litigation, founder activity), and deciding ahead of time what would make you act. This guide covers information rights under the NVCA model, what to read in an update, and which signals are worth tracking.updated September 24, 2026
- Third-party due diligence on a startup investment: when it is worth it and what it costsPaying for outside due diligence on a startup investment makes sense when the check is big enough to matter, the open questions need skills you don't have (code, cap tables, foreign structures), and the round closes before you could learn them. Here's what the data says about diligence and returns, what each kind of provider covers, why who pays matters, and how to judge the price.updated September 24, 2026
- Can you use AI for startup due diligence? What it catches and what it missesYou can use AI for the first pass of startup due diligence, but keep the decision for yourself. A language model will summarize a deck, map competitors, draft questions and spot inconsistencies in minutes. It can't verify claims against primary sources, call references, read a private codebase, or tell you which of its confident sentences is wrong. Here's where the line sits and how to use it well.updated September 24, 2026
- How to diligence an Israeli startup as a US investor: IIA grants, Section 102 and the Delaware flipDiligencing an Israeli startup as a US investor means checking four things a US checklist misses: which entity you're buying and whether it has flipped to Delaware, Israel Innovation Authority grants and the limits they put on moving IP abroad, the Section 102 option plan, and what the local investors on the cap table signal. Here's what each one means and what to ask for.updated September 24, 2026
- Startup due diligence checklist for angel investors and family officesA seed-stage due diligence checklist covers seven areas: the entity and who owns the IP, the founders, what's built versus claimed, customers and revenue, the market including cheap alternatives, the deal terms, and legal and regulatory exposure. This guide orders them by what kills a deal most cheaply, shows how much time the data says is enough, and ends in a one-page written verdict.updated September 24, 2026
The first read is $99.
Send the deal you're closest to wiring on. You get page one in 72 hours and a 20-minute call to walk it. Live deals only, capped at 4 a month so full engagements never wait.
email :: adam@olivent.vc
Olivent Diligence provides independent research on specific private companies. It is not investment, legal, tax, or accounting advice and not a recommendation to buy or sell any security. The decision to invest is the client's alone. Findings are based on information available at the delivery date.