Deal evaluation
The Angel Deal Diligence Checklist
Most angels decide on a gut read of the founder and a quick skim of the deck. Sometimes that works. Often it's how you end up with a position you can't defend six months later when a partner asks why you did it.
You don't need a 40-page diligence process. You need a repeatable one you'll actually run, every time, in about thirty minutes. Here's ours, free.
Capture the answers, the decision, and who signed off, attached to the deal forever.
Free, no signup required.
Optional. We'll send the template plus the companion set, and the occasional note on how small investor groups operate. No spam, unsubscribe anytime.
What the checklist covers
It walks ten areas, fast. Founder and team. Market and timing. Product and traction. Business model and unit economics. The round. The cap table. Legal and docs. Red flags. Then the two that most checklists skip, and the two that matter most.
The questions are blunt on purpose. "Have we seen the product work, or just slides about the product?" "Is growth real demand, or paid acquisition that stops when the money stops?" "Is there pressure to decide faster than we're comfortable with?" The point is to make yourself answer out loud, not to nod along to a pitch.
The two sections that matter most
Your thesis. Why this, why now, and what specifically would make you sell. Write it down before you wire. Not after, when you already know the outcome and your memory has quietly rewritten the story. The version you write at the moment of decision is the only honest one.
Partner sign-off.If you invest with two or three other people, a deal isn't decided until each of them has written their take and said whether they're in. The checklist has a block for exactly that. It turns "I thought we all agreed" into a record.
How to use it
Run it live while you're evaluating, not as paperwork afterward. Most of it you can fill in during the founder call and a half hour of follow-up. The thesis and the sign-off you do together, before the check goes out.
Keep the finished checklist. The whole value shows up later, when the company is doing well or badly and you want to know what you actually believed going in.
Where the PDF breaks
It captures the analysis but not the decision.
A filled-in PDF tells you what you looked at. It doesn't hold the moment you all said yes, or who said it.
Aleva
The answers, the thesis, and each sign-off stay attached to the deal.
Three partners can't live in one file.
The minute more than one person has a take, a static document can't hold the back-and-forth. You're back to a thread.
Aleva
Multi-author by design. Every partner writes their own take.
It gets filed and forgotten.
The checklist goes in a folder the day you sign, and nobody opens it again, which is precisely when you would want it.
Aleva
Searchable years later, right next to the outcome.
What the free version does instead
Inside Aleva, you run the same checklist against the actual deal. The answers, the thesis, and each partner's sign-off stay attached to the investment, multi-author, and searchable years later. When you're deciding whether to follow on, the reasoning you captured at the start is right there.
Free, single player to start, ready in a minute.
Create your free Aleva workspace and keep the reasoning, not just the result.
Run it free in AlevaFAQ
What should an angel check before investing?
Founder quality and honesty, whether the market is big enough to matter, real evidence of demand, the unit economics, the terms of the round, and the cap table. Just as important: write down your own thesis and your sell triggers before you commit.
How long should angel diligence take?
For most angel checks, a focused thirty to sixty minutes plus the founder conversation. The goal isn't institutional depth. It's a consistent process you run every time so you stop deciding on vibes alone.
What are common red flags?
A founder who gets evasive on a specific question, a story that changes between conversations, pressure to decide fast, and a plan that only works if a long list of things all go right. Note the exact question that got a fuzzy answer.
How do partners run diligence on a deal together?
Each partner does their own read and writes their take and their concerns, then you decide together with all of it visible. The checklist's sign-off section is built for this, so the decision is a record instead of a vague group memory.
Related: the Partnership Deal Memo for capturing the full decision, and the Angel Portfolio Tracker for everything after you say yes.