Offering
Leadership Due Diligence
Due diligence on people. An independent, written assessment of whether a management team can carry the investment thesis or strategic mandate, for boards, CEOs, and investors in B2B software.
What it is.
An independent assessment of whether a management team can carry an investment thesis or strategic mandate. We interview the management team itself and return a verdict on that team.
Who it's for.
Boards and CEOs, and investors, whatever the size of the company, including PE, VC, and growth equity firms with MarTech and eCommerce portfolio companies.
What it delivers.
A clear verdict on the team across four lenses, the gaps that matter to the plan, and a view of what it takes to close them. Fee-separated from any search, so the recommendation is never a setup for a sale.
Overview
You would never skip financial diligence. The team is just as material.
Investors already run diligence on financials, technology, market, and legal. Almost nobody runs it on the commercial team, and that team is the single largest determinant of whether the thesis executes.
The question is not whether the leaders are impressive. Impressive is easy to perform in a management presentation. The question is whether the people in the revenue-critical seats have actually done the specific thing your plan now requires, whether that is moving upmarket into the enterprise, surviving a replatforming, or building a channel.
Leadership Due Diligence answers that question with an independent read, written for the people accountable for whether the plan works.
Four lenses, one verdict.
Who this is for
Boards and CEOs who need to know whether the leadership team can carry the plan they have committed to.
Investors, whatever the size of the portfolio company. That includes PE, VC, and growth equity firms assessing the leadership of a MarTech or eCommerce portfolio company.
We work only in MarTech, eCommerce, Composable Commerce, Supply Chain SaaS, and Enterprise AI, and have for 30 years. The ways GTM leaders succeed and fail in these markets are specific and they repeat.
What’s involved
Capability against the thesis.
Each leader's real track record mapped to the specific demands of your plan, not a generic competency grid. Strengths to lean on, gaps to close, seats that need a change.
Cognitive fit and team dynamics.
Using Kolbe, a licensed third-party instrument, we document how the team is wired and how that maps to the work ahead. Kolbe is one input to a human judgment, never a screen or a cutoff.
Scalability and key-person risk.
Who is a single point of failure. Who has plateaued. Who is ready for more than their title. Where the organization breaks first when you push the plan.
The real cost of the org.
A grounded view of what the leadership team will cost to complete and upgrade, so the people line in your model rests on something better than a placeholder.
Outcomes
500+
GTM placements across 170+ SaaS clients, since 2000
We engage pre-close, during the hold, or ahead of exit. Every engagement is scoped to the deal or the mandate, and every conclusion is a human judgment made by a TRG partner.
A clear verdict on whether this team can carry this plan.
The specific gaps that put the plan at risk, and the seats where they sit.
A realistic view of what it will take to close those gaps.
A recommendation you can trust, because it is fee-separated from any search. We never design or run Leadership Due Diligence as a route to a search engagement.