Founders treat the signed term sheet as the moment the raise is done. It is not. It is the moment the clock starts on diligence, and diligence is where deals quietly lose weeks, valuation, and sometimes momentum they never get back. The founders who move through it fast are not the ones with the cleanest code. They are the ones who had their documents ready before anyone asked.
Here is what actually happens after the term sheet, how long it takes, and where the time disappears.
How long it actually takes
Series A diligence, the full process and not just the technical slice, typically runs four to eight weeks. Some rounds stretch to six to twelve weeks depending on the firm and the complexity of your business. The technical portion sits inside that window and rarely finishes faster than the rest, because it depends on documents and access you control.
By Series A, the diligence checklist has expanded to roughly 150 to 200 items. That covers around two years of financials, every material contract, employee and contractor agreements, a full IP audit, and your technical architecture documentation. The technical reviewer wants to understand how the system is built, where the risks are, and whether the team can scale it. None of that is hard to provide if it exists. All of it is slow to produce if it does not.
Where the weeks go
The mistake founders make is picturing diligence as a smart reviewer thinking hard about their architecture. That part is fast. Most delays are not analysis; they are waiting.
Waiting on documents you have to write from scratch. Waiting on a contractor to sign an IP assignment that should have been signed two years ago. Waiting on someone to reconstruct which services run where because it only lives in one engineer's head. The reviewer is ready; you are not. That gap is the timeline.
This is why a prepared founder can compress technical diligence dramatically. If your architecture is already written down, if your access controls are documented, if your dependency and license inventory exists, the reviewer moves at the speed of reading instead of the speed of your team scrambling. That preparation is exactly what a 3-page tech memo for investors is designed to front-load, and it is why the technical half of your data room should be built before you open the raise, not during.
What stalls it, and it is not the analysis
When I dig into a stalled round, the causes cluster in a few predictable places.
Incomplete documentation is the single most common cause of deal delays. If the reviewer has to keep asking for things you should have handed over on day one, every round trip adds days.
Unsigned contractor IP assignments are a classic middle-ground problem. When a contractor wrote part of your product and never signed over the rights, lawyers have to draft and chase retroactive agreements, and that alone commonly adds three to six weeks. It is boring, it is avoidable, and it stops deals cold. This is its own recurring headache worth handling early, which is why the IP paperwork that stalls term sheets deserves attention before you are in diligence.
Customer references that contradict the pitch will also stall things, though that is less a technical issue than a story-consistency one.
The cost of all this is not just time. Poor diligence preparation has been linked to four-to-eight-week delays and, in some analyses, valuation reductions in the range of ten to fifteen percent, because delay gives the other side room to renegotiate and erodes the momentum that got you the term sheet.
How to compress the timeline
The playbook is unglamorous and it works.
Build the data room before you raise, not after the term sheet. Assemble your architecture overview, your security summary, your dependency and license inventory, and your list of third-party services. Get every contractor and employee IP assignment signed and filed. Reconstruct any knowledge that lives in one person's head into a document, because "ask Dave" is not an answer a reviewer accepts.
Then designate one person to own diligence responses so requests do not scatter across a busy team. Speed here is mostly about response latency. A reviewer who gets same-day answers finishes in weeks; one who waits three days per request drags into months.
The founders who treat diligence as something to prepare for, rather than something that happens to them, keep their leverage. The ones who improvise hand it away one delayed document at a time.
FAQ
How long does technical diligence take at Series A? The full diligence process typically runs four to eight weeks, sometimes six to twelve. The technical portion sits inside that and moves at the speed of the documents and access you provide.
What causes the most delay? Incomplete documentation is the top cause. Unsigned contractor IP assignments commonly add three to six weeks on their own. Most delay is waiting on documents, not the technical analysis itself.
Can I speed it up? Yes, substantially. Prepare the data room before you raise, get IP assignments signed, document your architecture, and assign one owner for diligence responses so nothing waits on a busy team.
Does a delay actually cost money? It can. Poor preparation has been tied to multi-week delays and valuation reductions of roughly ten to fifteen percent, because delay erodes momentum and gives the other side room to renegotiate. If you want your technical diligence prepped before you open the round, book a call.