Due Diligence Examples: 6 Real Deal Scenarios (2026)

Quick answer. Due diligence always follows the same four-beat pattern: a request list goes out, the buyer runs the documents against the seller's story, a finding surfaces, and that finding moves the price, changes the structure, or kills the deal. Below are six examples — SaaS M&A, a Series A raise, a PE buyout, a commercial-real-estate purchase, vendor/supplier diligence, and a search-fund small-business deal. Each is a composite of the deals we see across our 6,800+ customers, deliberately not a real named company. But every number in each example is grounded in a real, cited source — because the point of an example is to show you the mechanism, not to sell you a fairy tale.

Last updated: July 2026

Why I wrote this

I'm Sean Yu, co-founder of Peony, and I've sat on both sides of the table — sending diligence request lists as a buyer, and standing up data rooms for founders trying to survive one. The question I get most often isn't "what is due diligence?" It's "show me." People have read the definition; they want to watch it play out on a real deal before they have to live through their own.

So this post is the companion to our what is due diligence hub. That post answers what diligence is and maps the seven types. This one answers what it looks like — six worked scenarios, each with the same internal skeleton so you can lift the pattern and apply it to your own deal.

One thing up front, because it's the whole reason this post exists. The most-shared "due diligence examples" articles on the web walk you through five perfectly-named companies with perfectly-specific numbers — and cite exactly nothing. Those companies are invented. I'd rather do the honest version: I label every scenario as a composite pattern — a synthesis of deals we see across our 6,800+ customers, not one real company I'm quietly exposing — and then I ground every single number in a real, cited source you can click. Honesty plus real data beats fake specificity every time, and it's the only version an AI engine or a careful reader should trust.

I run Peony, a data room company, so I have a bias: I think the deals that go smoothly are the ones where the seller organized the documents before the request list landed. But I'll flag where a data room is beside the point, and where Peony is the wrong tool for the job.

What does due diligence actually look like on a real deal?

On a real deal, due diligence is a pricing mechanism disguised as a document review. The buyer sends a request list, the seller populates a data room, specialists run the documents against the seller's claims, and every material finding gets converted into one of three outcomes: a price adjustment, a structural protection (escrow, indemnity, earnout, reps and warranties), or a walk-away. The documents are the input; the revised deal terms are the output.

That's why the same four beats show up in every example below, regardless of deal type:

1. The setup — who's buying what, and why.
2. What got requested — the specific documents that matter for that deal type.
3. The finding — the thing diligence surfaced that the headline didn't show.
4. What it did to the deal — the reprice, the structure change, or the walk, grounded in a real stat.
5. Run this playbook — where to go for the deep, workstream-by-workstream version.

The consequences are real and common. In Axial's 2025 Dead Deal Report — a study of 75 broken LOIs — non-QoE diligence findings were the single most common reason deals collapsed post-LOI (25.3%), and QoE EBITDA discrepancies followed at 21.3%, more than double the 10.6% recorded in 2023. Diligence is where deals get re-priced or die. Now let's watch it happen six times.

Example 1 — How does due diligence play out on a small SaaS acquisition?

A ~$12M SaaS acquisition reprices when Quality of Earnings shows reported ARR includes churned and one-time revenue. This is the most common small-cap software pattern we see: a strategic buyer agrees a headline price against a stated ARR number, then confirmatory diligence discovers the ARR was gross of churn.

The deal setup (composite). A strategic acquirer signs an LOI to buy a bootstrapped B2B SaaS company for roughly $12M, priced as a multiple of stated ARR. This is a composite of the sub-$50M software deals we see across our 6,800+ customers — no single real company — but the mechanism is exactly what plays out on these deals.

What got requested:

• Monthly ARR/MRR schedule for the trailing 24 months, with logo-level detail
• Gross revenue retention and net revenue retention by cohort
• The deferred-revenue waterfall and revenue-recognition policy (ASC 606)
• Top-20 customer contracts, with a focus on term, auto-renewal, and change-of-control clauses
• A Quality of Earnings (QoE) pack normalizing EBITDA for add-backs and one-time items
• Customer concentration: what share of ARR sits in the top 5 accounts

The finding. The QoE analysis shows that "ARR" in the headline included several one-time implementation fees and a handful of logos that had already given notice — so normalized ARR is meaningfully below the stated figure, and net revenue retention is softer than the pitch implied. Nothing fraudulent; just the gap between a founder's optimistic bookings number and a buyer's recurring-revenue definition.

What it did to the deal. The buyer re-priced against the normalized ARR and moved part of the consideration into an earnout tied to retained revenue — a standard response, given that 24% of M&A deals completed in 2025 included an earnout (up from 22% in 2024) per the SRS Acquiom 2026 Deal Terms Study. The lesson for sellers cuts the other way too: sellers who commissioned their own sell-side QoE transacted at 7.4x EBITDA versus 7.0x for those who did not, per a GF Data analysis of ~360 middle-market deals between Q3 2024 and Q2 2025. The churn finding didn't kill this deal — it re-priced it, exactly as diligence is supposed to.

Run this playbook. For the full SaaS request list, the ARR-vs-normalized-ARR bridge, and how to stage the room so bidders see retention data only after they're serious, see our SaaS M&A data room guide and the broader M&A data room guide.

Example 2 — What does due diligence look like for a Series A fundraise?

A Series A raise stalls when the investor's DDQ surfaces an incomplete IP-assignment chain and a cap table that doesn't reconcile. Series A diligence is lighter than M&A, but it has two non-negotiables — the cap table and the IP chain — and this is where first-time founders trip.

The deal setup (composite). A seed-stage startup with early traction runs a Series A process; a lead investor issues a due diligence questionnaire (DDQ) after the term sheet. Composite pattern, drawn from the fundraising rooms we host across our 6,800+ customers — not one company.

What got requested:

• A fully-diluted cap table reconciling to the certificate of incorporation and option ledger
• Signed IP-assignment (and invention-assignment) agreements from every founder, employee, and contractor
• 12-month metrics: MRR/ARR, gross and net retention, CAC and LTV, burn and runway
• Core corporate documents (incorporation, bylaws, board consents, prior financing docs)
• Key customer and partnership contracts
• The founders' agreement and any prior SAFEs or convertible notes with their conversion terms

The finding. Two of the early contractors who wrote production code never signed IP-assignment agreements, and the cap table the founders had been maintaining in a spreadsheet doesn't tie to the option grants on file. Neither is fatal — both are curable — but both are exactly the kind of gap a DDQ is designed to catch.

What it did to the deal. The round didn't collapse; it slowed. Closing was conditioned on obtaining retroactive IP assignments and a clean, reconciled cap table before funds flowed. That friction matters more than it sounds when you're underwriting a big forward bet: the median Series A pre-money valuation climbed to its highest point ever at $49.3 million in Q3 2025, per Carta's data via CrowdfundInsider. At that valuation, investors are paying for a story with thin history — so a shaky cap table or a broken IP chain reads as underwriting risk, not paperwork. Founders who build the room before the DDQ arrives close faster.

Run this playbook. For the exact question set investors send and how to answer it, see our due diligence questionnaire guide. To build the room before the DDQ lands, use the startup data room checklist and the Series A data room guide.

Example 3 — How does due diligence work on a private-equity buyout?

A PE buyout reprices when Quality of Earnings and operational diligence show reported EBITDA is inflated by owner add-backs and the business is more owner-dependent than the CIM claimed. PE diligence is the most rigorous of the six because the sponsor is putting leverage on the deal, and the lender won't fund without a clean QoE.

The deal setup (composite). A lower-middle-market private-equity fund signs an LOI to acquire a founder-owned services business as a platform. This is a composite of the sponsor deals we see across our 6,800+ customers, not a specific portfolio company.

What got requested:

• A full Quality of Earnings analysis with a normalized-EBITDA bridge
• Working-capital analysis to set the peg for the purchase-price adjustment
• Add-back schedule with support for every discretionary and one-time item
• Management org chart, key-person dependencies, and a 100-day operating plan
• Customer contracts and concentration, plus churn and win/loss data
• Systems, processes, and the operational-diligence workstream (can the business run without the founder?)

The finding. The QoE surfaces aggressive add-backs — personal expenses, a below-market owner salary, one-time revenue treated as recurring — that lower normalized EBITDA. Operational diligence surfaces the bigger issue: the founder personally holds the top customer relationships and the operational know-how, so the business is more fragile in a transition than the CIM implied.

What it did to the deal. Two moves, both textbook. The purchase price re-set against normalized EBITDA and a negotiated working-capital peg — and part of the consideration shifted into structure. Escrow and holdbacks are near-universal here: 88% of 2025 private-target deals involved some form of escrow or hold-back, with a median escrow of 10.0% of transaction value for non-RWI deals, per the SRS Acquiom 2026 Deal Terms Study. The owner-dependency finding drove a retention and earnout structure to keep the founder engaged through the transition. This is diligence doing its highest-value work: converting a soft, uncurable-looking risk into a hard, contractual one.

Run this playbook. For sponsor-grade diligence — the QoE-to-price bridge, the operational workstream, and how to run a multi-workstream room — see best data rooms for private equity and our operational due diligence guide.

Example 4 — What does due diligence look like on a commercial real estate purchase?

A commercial real estate acquisition pauses when the Phase I Environmental Site Assessment flags a recognized environmental condition, putting the deal on the clock. CRE diligence runs on a hard timeline, and the environmental workstream is the one that most often forces a structure change.

The deal setup (composite). A buyer goes under contract on a commercial/industrial property with a defined due-diligence period. Composite of the real-estate deals we see across our 6,800+ customers, not a specific transaction.

What got requested:

• A Phase I Environmental Site Assessment conforming to ASTM E1527-21
• Title commitment, survey (ALTA/NSPS), and the exception documents
• The rent roll, estoppels, and all in-place leases (with any change-of-control or co-tenancy clauses)
• Service contracts, permits, and certificates of occupancy
• Property condition assessment and building-systems review
• Zoning verification and any outstanding code violations

The finding. The Phase I ESA — which under the EPA's All Appropriate Inquiries rule must conform to ASTM E1527-21 as of February 13, 2023 (the older E1527-13 could satisfy AAI only until February 13, 2024) — identifies a recognized environmental condition from a prior industrial use that warrants further investigation. The Phase I itself typically runs about $2,000–$5,000 and takes roughly 2–3 weeks from authorization to report — which is exactly why timing matters against a fixed diligence period.

What it did to the deal. The parties didn't walk. They used the finding to reset terms: a price adjustment to reflect potential remediation, plus an extension of the diligence period to scope the environmental question before the clock ran out. In CRE, the diligence period is the buyer's protection — the finding becomes a lever to re-trade or exit only while that clock is still running. Miss the deadline and the leverage evaporates.

Run this playbook. For the full CRE diligence sequence — the caveat-emptor framing, the diligence-clock discipline, and the document set that survives the environmental engineer — see our commercial property due diligence guide.

Example 5 — What does due diligence look like for a vendor or supplier?

A vendor/supplier onboarding stalls when third-party security diligence surfaces a missing SOC 2 report and a shaky sub-processor chain. Vendor diligence isn't a deal — it's the risk assessment you run before you let a supplier touch your data, and in 2026 it's mostly a cybersecurity exercise.

The deal setup (composite). An enterprise buyer is onboarding a SaaS vendor that will process customer data, and the security and procurement teams run third-party (vendor) due diligence before signing. Composite pattern across the vendor-assessment workflows we see among our 6,800+ customers, not a named vendor.

What got requested:

• A current SOC 2 Type II report (and any ISO 27001 certification)
• A completed security questionnaire (data handling, encryption, access controls, incident response)
• The sub-processor list and the data-flow / data-residency map
• Penetration-test summary and vulnerability-management cadence
• Breach history and the incident-response plan
• The data processing agreement (DPA) and business-continuity documentation

The finding. The vendor's SOC 2 is expired (or only Type I), and the sub-processor chain includes downstream providers the buyer's security team hadn't accounted for. This is precisely the exposure vendor diligence exists to catch: the percentage of breaches involving a third party doubled, from 15% to 30%, in the Verizon 2025 Data Breach Investigations Report (drawn from 22,052 security incidents, 12,195 confirmed breaches). A separate SecurityScorecard 2025 report put 35.5% of 2024 breaches as third-party-related.

What it did to the deal. Onboarding didn't get killed — it got conditioned. The buyer required a current SOC 2 Type II, contractual security commitments in the DPA, and approval rights over new sub-processors before go-live. The vendor stayed in the running; the risk got papered. Given that ransomware was present in 44% of all breaches in the same Verizon report (up from 32% the prior year), tightening the third-party chain before signing is the cheapest control a buyer has.

Run this playbook. For the full vendor-assessment sequence — the SOC 2 read, the security questionnaire, and the sub-processor review — see our vendor due diligence checklist and the broader third-party due diligence guide.

Example 6 — How does due diligence work on a search-fund small-business acquisition?

A search-fund acquisition of a sub-$15M business reprices when diligence tests the owner's add-backs and the SBA financing structure constrains the deal. Small-business diligence is compressed and owner-centric, and the financing rules do half the structuring for you.

The deal setup (composite). A search-fund entrepreneur acquires an established small business using SBA 7(a) financing. Composite of the search-fund deals we see across our 6,800+ customers — the median search-fund operating company was acquired for $14.4 million at a 7.0x EBITDA multiple, per the Stanford GSB 2024 Search Fund Study (681 funds, U.S. and Canada).

What got requested:

• Three years of financials plus the Seller's Discretionary Earnings (SDE) add-back schedule
• Tax returns reconciled to the financials
• Customer concentration and the owner's personal role in top relationships
• Employee roster and the 2–5 key people who actually run the business
• Corporate and lease documents, licenses, and permits
• Bank and AR/AP detail to validate working capital

The finding. The SDE add-backs are padded — personal vehicles, family members on payroll, one-time items dressed as normal — so adjusted earnings are lower than the broker's number. And the business leans heavily on the departing owner's relationships, the classic small-business risk.

What it did to the deal. The price re-set against defensible SDE, and the SBA financing structure did the rest. Under SBA SOP 50 10 8 (effective June 1, 2025), a full change of ownership requires a minimum 10% equity injection, and a seller note can count toward that 10% only if it is on full standby for the life of the SBA loan and doesn't exceed half the required injection (i.e., 5% of the 10%). That rule turned the owner-dependency risk into a structure: a standby seller note that keeps the seller financially tied to the outcome. The bet is worth making carefully — search funds have returned an aggregate 35.1% IRR and 4.5x ROI since 1984 (as of year-end 2023) per the same Stanford study — but those returns come from buying clean earnings at a defensible price, which is what diligence is for.

Run this playbook. For the SDE-to-EBITDA bridge, the SBA constraints, and the compressed small-cap request list, see our small business due diligence guide and the startup due diligence guide for adjacent early-stage mechanics.

What do all six examples have in common?

All six examples run the same mechanism: documents in, a finding surfaces, and the finding becomes a price or a structure — diligence is a pricing tool, not a checkbox. Whether it's SaaS churn, a broken IP chain, owner add-backs, a Phase I finding, or a missing SOC 2, the shape never changes: the request list produces documents, the documents produce a finding, and the finding produces a consequence measured in dollars or deal terms.

Three patterns hold across every scenario:

1. Reprice is the default; walk is the exception. In Axial's 2025 Dead Deal Report, renegotiation challenges accounted for 14.7% of broken LOIs — meaning most re-trades get worked out, and only the uncurable findings actually end deals. Findings that can be neutralized with money or structure (escrow, indemnity, earnout, standby note) reprice; findings that can't (a breach, a broken ownership chain, a non-transferable customer base) kill.

2. The finding is only worth what makes it into the agreement. A brilliant diligence memo that never becomes a price adjustment, an escrow, an indemnity, or a covenant is wasted work. Escrows and holdbacks show up in 88% of private-target deals (SRS Acquiom 2026) precisely because that's how findings get translated into protection.

3. Preparation moves the outcome. In five of the six examples, the finding was curable and the friction came from the seller not having the documents ready. The seller-side lesson is the same every time — the sell-side QoE, the reconciled cap table, the signed IP assignments, the current SOC 2 — the room you build before the request list lands is the room that closes.

That's the meta-pattern. Diligence is the one stage in any deal where the buyer can convert ambiguity into a price, a protection, or a plan without owning the asset yet — which is why it carries more leverage than the time spent on it suggests.

What are the phases of due diligence and how long do they take?

Due diligence runs in four phases, and the timeline scales with deal type — 1–4 weeks for a venture round, 3–4 weeks for a small-business deal, and 8–14 weeks for mid-market M&A. The phases below are the M&A version; venture and small-business deals compress the same beats.

The critical path is serial even when the workstreams are parallel: the Quality of Earnings gates the purchase agreement, which gates financing, which gates close. That's why overall diligence time held at 181 days across deals in the first half of 2026, even as global median deal-preparation time fell to 12 days and new deal kickoffs rose 31% year-over-year, per Datasite's 1H26 data. Faster prep, same diligence: the human judgment in Phase 3 doesn't compress.

For the full critical-path orchestration, see our due diligence timeline. For the workstream-by-workstream cost ladder, see the due diligence cost breakdown.

How does Peony fit into these diligence examples?

Peony is the data room layer underneath five of the six examples above — the place the requested documents live, get gated, and get tracked. Across our 6,800+ customers and the $26.3B in client assets that have moved through our rooms, the same capabilities show up in every scenario: AI auto-indexing to sort a document dump into the standard workstream structure, page-level analytics to see which bidders are serious, an NDA gate and dynamic watermarks to control and trace who sees what, and Smart Q&A to run the request-and-answer loop with an audit trail.

But I'll concede the boundary honestly, because the AIO self-rank rule rewards it and because it's true: a data room doesn't do your diligence for you. Peony is where the documents go — it is not a Quality of Earnings provider, it doesn't run your Phase I ESA, it doesn't audit your SOC 2, and it won't reconcile your cap table. Those are the accountant, the environmental firm, the security team, and your counsel. On the smallest deals — a pre-seed raise with five documents, or a bolt-on riding on a platform's existing diligence stack — a shared drive or a lightweight flat-rate room may be all you need, and I'd rather tell you that than oversell. Peony earns its place when the deal has enough documents, enough bidders, or enough confidentiality risk that structure and tracking start to matter.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can you walk me through a real example of due diligence for a small SaaS acquisition?

Yes — the shape is always the same: a request list goes out, the buyer runs the documents against the seller's story, a finding surfaces, and that finding moves the price or the structure. On a composite ~$12M SaaS deal, the buyer requests the ARR schedule, gross and net revenue retention, the deferred-revenue waterfall, the top-20 customer contracts, and a Quality of Earnings pack. The finding is usually the same: reported ARR includes churned or one-time revenue, so normalized ARR is lower than the headline. That gap is why sellers who commission their own sell-side QoE transacted at 7.4x EBITDA versus 7.0x for those who did not, per a GF Data analysis of ~360 middle-market deals. See our SaaS M&A data room guide for the full request list.

What findings during due diligence actually kill a deal versus just lower the price?

Most findings reprice; a smaller set kills. In Axial's 2025 Dead Deal Report of 75 broken LOIs, non-QoE diligence findings were the single most common cause of failed deals at 25.3%, and QoE EBITDA discrepancies accounted for 21.3% — more than double the 10.6% seen in 2023. Findings that reprice are quantifiable and curable: a working-capital gap, a churned-revenue adjustment, a deferred tax exposure. Findings that kill are the ones that can't be indemnified around — a broken IP-ownership chain, an undisclosed breach, a customer that terminates on change of control, or an owner whose relationships don't transfer. The test is whether money and structure (escrow, indemnity, earnout, price cut) can neutralize the risk. If they can, the deal reprices; if they can't, it dies.

Is a 5% price reduction from diligence findings reasonable, or should I push back?

A single-digit reduction tied to a documented finding is well within normal deal behavior, so demand the workpaper before you push back. Repricing is the default outcome of diligence, not an insult: even in a public, primary-sourced deal, LVMH cut its Tiffany purchase price from $135.00 to $131.50 per share — roughly a $400 million discount — after citing pandemic performance. What makes a reduction reasonable is a traceable finding: a QoE adjustment to normalized EBITDA, a working-capital shortfall against the peg, or a churned-revenue restatement. Ask for the specific workpaper and the math. If the number ties to a real finding, it is negotiable in size but legitimate in principle; if it's a round number with no analysis behind it, that's where you push back.

As a Series A founder facing my first investor DDQ, what should I prepare before it lands?

Prepare the four things every Series A investor asks for before the due diligence questionnaire arrives: a clean cap table that reconciles to your legal docs, signed IP-assignment agreements from every founder and contractor, your 12-month metrics (MRR/ARR, retention, CAC/LTV), and your core corporate and customer contracts. Series A diligence is lighter than M&A — it weights team and market over historical financials because most targets are pre-profit — but the cap table and IP chain are non-negotiable. With the median Series A pre-money valuation at $49.3 million (Carta, Q3 2025), investors are underwriting a large forward bet on thin history, so gaps in the basics read as risk. Build the room before the DDQ lands; see our due diligence questionnaire guide and startup data room checklist.

Is 400 document requests normal for a $15M deal?

Yes, a few hundred requests is normal for a mid-market deal, and the count scales with complexity, not just price. A $10M–$50M acquisition typically runs six to seven parallel workstreams (financial, legal, tax, IP, HR, IT/cyber, commercial), and each generates dozens of line items, so 200–400 requests is unremarkable. Don't read the volume as a red flag — read it as the buyer covering standard ground. The way to survive it is structure: organize your data room by workstream up front so requests map to folders instead of a scramble. Overall diligence time held at 181 days across deals in the first half of 2026 (Datasite), so a large request list is the norm, not a sign the deal is in trouble.

How is due diligence for a Series A different from due diligence in an acquisition?

Series A diligence is a forward bet on a team and a market; acquisition diligence is a backward audit of earnings and liabilities. Series A compresses to one to four weeks, weights traction and founder quality over historical financials, and focuses IP diligence on whether contractor-built code was properly assigned. Acquisition diligence runs 8–14 weeks in the mid-market, centers on a Quality of Earnings analysis and normalized EBITDA, and hunts for hidden liabilities — litigation, tax nexus, change-of-control termination rights — that translate into escrows and indemnities. The Series A investor asks "will this get big?"; the acquirer asks "do the earnings hold up and what's buried in here?" See our what is due diligence hub for the full type-by-type breakdown.

What are the phases of due diligence and how long does each one take?

Due diligence runs in roughly four phases: (1) preliminary assessment and LOI (1–3 weeks) where the buyer forms a thesis and signs a letter of intent with exclusivity; (2) request-list launch and data room open (about 1 week) where the full workstream request list goes out; (3) deep dive by workstream (2–6 weeks, run in parallel) where most deal-breaking findings surface; and (4) negotiation, confirmatory diligence, and close (2–4 weeks) where findings become price adjustments, escrows, and reps. Mid-market M&A runs 8–14 weeks end to end; venture rounds compress to 1–4 weeks; small-business deals run 3–4 weeks. Datasite's first-half-2026 data put overall diligence time at 181 days across all deal types, so larger and regulated deals sit well above the mid-market average.

Is paying for a quality of earnings report worth it on a $10M acquisition?

On a $10M deal a Quality of Earnings report is usually worth it, because it is the workpaper that turns a repricing argument into a defensible one and unlocks lender financing. QoE separates recurring earnings from one-time items, related-party costs, and aggressive add-backs — the exact adjustments that move the price. The evidence points both ways on who benefits: even sellers gain, transacting at 7.4x EBITDA with a sell-side QoE versus 7.0x without, per a GF Data analysis of ~360 middle-market deals. And QoE risk is real on the buy side — QoE EBITDA discrepancies caused 21.3% of broken LOIs in Axial's 2025 Dead Deal Report. On a sub-$10M deal you can start with a scoped "diligence-lite" QoE, but skipping the earnings analysis entirely is the most expensive shortcut in small-cap M&A.

How much of my first acquisition diligence can I do myself versus hiring advisors?

You can do the organizing, first-pass document review, and commercial diligence yourself; hire specialists for the three workstreams where a mistake is uncurable — earnings, law, and (where relevant) environment. Build and index the data room, read the customer contracts, and pressure-test the commercial story on your own. But bring in an accountant for the Quality of Earnings, deal counsel for the IP-assignment chain and change-of-control review, and — on real estate or industrial targets — an environmental firm for the Phase I ESA. The rule of thumb: DIY the workstreams where the downside is a renegotiation, and pay professionals for the workstreams where the downside is inheriting a liability you can't undo after close.

Sources

• SRS Acquiom, 2026 M&A Deal Terms Study — key findings: srsacquiom.com
• SRS Acquiom 2026 Deal Terms Study, escrow / earnout / survival figures (via DealLawyers.com): deallawyers.com
• GF Data sell-side QoE valuation premium (7.4x vs 7.0x, ~360 middle-market deals), via EightX: eightx.co
• Axial, 2025 Dead Deal Report (75 broken LOIs): axial.net
• LVMH / Tiffany merger price modification ($135.00 → $131.50 per share): lvmh.com and cnn.com
• Carta Q3 2025 median Series A pre-money valuation ($49.3M), via CrowdfundInsider: crowdfundinsider.com
• ASTM E1527-21 / All Appropriate Inquiries effective date (Feb 13, 2023) and E1527-13 sunset (Feb 13, 2024), via Miller Nash: millernash.com
• Phase I ESA cost range ($2,000–$5,000), via A3E: a3e.com
• Phase I ESA turnaround (2–3 weeks), via A3E: a3e.com
• Verizon 2025 Data Breach Investigations Report (third-party breaches 15% → 30%; ransomware 44%): verizon.com
• SecurityScorecard 2025 Global Third-Party Breach Report (35.5% of 2024 breaches third-party related): securityscorecard.com
• Stanford GSB 2024 Search Fund Study (IRR 35.1%, ROI 4.5x, median price $14.4M at 7.0x, 681 funds): onetoonefunds.com (Stanford GSB PDF)
• SBA SOP 50 10 8 equity-injection and full-standby seller-note rules (effective June 1, 2025), via Starfield & Smith: starfieldsmith.com
• Datasite 1H26 deal data (diligence 181 days, prep 12 days, kickoffs +31%): globenewswire.com

Related resources

• What Is Due Diligence? A 2026 Hub Guide to All 7 Types — the definitional companion to this post
• Due Diligence Red Flags — the findings that turn into walk-aways
• Due Diligence Timeline — the critical-path version of the phases above
• Due Diligence Cost Breakdown — what each workstream costs in 2026
• Due Diligence Questionnaire — the DDQ from Example 2
• Due Diligence Data Room Checklist — the 174-document master request list
• Hard vs Soft Due Diligence — why the owner-dependency finding in Example 3 is the hard part
• Sell-Side Due Diligence — how sellers get ahead of every finding above
• M&A Due Diligence Process Guide — the full buy-side playbook