Operational guidance, not legal advice. This page distills named public sources (regulator guidance and industry practice). It is not a legal determination, not a notification decision, and not a substitute for your counsel, insurer, or a retained DFIR firm. Verify applicability and current deadlines for your facts and jurisdiction.
What do PE firms look for in an engineering organization?
Last verifiedPrivate-equity diligence weighs delivery predictability, engineering unit economics, technical-debt burden, and key-person risk — efficiency and EBITDA more than top-line growth alone. Metrics need denominators. This page is not investment advice and not legal advice.
PE engineering diligence, last verified 10 September 2026 against DORA / DevOps research reports, ISO/IEC 25010, and descriptive PE operating-framework notes (not a ranking of firms). Distinguish measurable metrics from qualitative judgment. Not investment advice. Not legal advice.
PE is not VC with a darker logo
Audience: a portfolio-company CTO or PE operating partner. This page is not investment advice and not legal advice. Kind of text: DORA reports are research / industry practice. ISO/IEC 25010 is a quality model. PE operating memos are descriptive industry practice, not a recommendation to buy or sell. ShipReady Metrics recommendation: publish DORA measures, per-committer metering, AI ROI scoring, and A–E readiness with coverage-as-confidence — never a single-metric verdict.
PE versus VC diligence
Last verified 10 September 2026. Contrast, not a ranking. Not investment advice.
| Question | Typical PE weight | Typical VC weight | What is measurable |
|---|---|---|---|
| Growth vs efficiency | Can we improve EBITDA and integrate add-ons without a rewrite? | Can this product find more users before the next round? | Cost-to-serve and delivery metrics vs pipeline anecdotes. |
| Technical debt | What must be spent in year one to keep the asset saleable? | Will debt block the next two scale steps? | See the debt-assessment page — still not a single number. |
| Key persons | Who walks at close, and is the on-call ring viable? | Is the founding CTO still writing the kernel? | Bus-factor counts; judgment still applies. |
| Buy-and-build | How mergeable are platforms and identity models? | Usually lighter unless the VC is already a consolidator. | Architecture facts, not a synergy model from this page. |
Metrics table — DORA and cost-per-committer
Measures are not verdicts. Last verified 10 September 2026. Not investment advice.
| Metric family | What it can show | What it cannot show |
|---|---|---|
| DORA (deploy frequency, lead time, change-fail, restore) | Delivery shape when definitions and coverage are honest. | Product-market fit, customer love, or “the team is good.” |
| Per-committer metering | Who is active and how cost allocates — a unit-economics input. | Individual performance rankings this product does not publish as HR scores. |
| AI ROI scoring | Whether AI-assisted work is measured at all. | A guarantee of savings after close. |
| Readiness A–E | Posture with a quality gate. | A purchase-price recommendation. |
What to do now
Operational steps. Last verified 10 September 2026. Not investment advice.
- Separate the PE questions (efficiency, debt, integration) from the VC questions (growth) before the first workshop.
- Attach denominators to every chart. Open the readiness-report and debt-assessment pages on this site.
- If you already have a session: DORA, per-committer metering, AI ROI, and A–E ratings are the measurable pack.
Checklist
Question list. Not investment advice.
- Do we have DORA definitions written down?
- Is cost-per-committer explained as metering, not as a ranking of people?
- Is year-one debt spend estimated as a range with assumptions?
- Have we named key-person risk without heroics?
Where this shows up in ShipReady Metrics
DORA engineering metrics, per-committer metering, AI ROI scoring, and readiness score with A–E ratings. The product does not give investment advice and does not compute EBITDA.
Primary sources (last verified 10 September 2026)
DORA research reports (dora.dev). ISO/IEC 25010. PE operating notes cited descriptively, not ranked. Not investment advice.