Investor Due Diligence Questions: The SEIS Checklist
The due diligence checklist for SEIS deals: twenty questions across the business and the scheme, printable and blunt.
In this article
This due diligence checklist is the working version of our full due diligence guide: the questions I actually work through before any SEIS cheque, in order, a due diligence checklist with no scoring system to hide behind. If a line cannot be answered from documents, it is not answered.
The business, ten questions
- What problem, for whom, and is anyone paying yet?
- Have these founders done hard things before?
- What does this raise buy, in months and milestones?
- What must be true for the next round to happen?
- Who competes, and why does this team win?
- What are the unit economics, honestly modelled?
- Is the valuation defensible out loud?
- Is the cap table clean: sensible founder ownership, no dead equity?
- What do customers say when the founders are not in the room?
- What kills this company, and how likely is it?
The scheme, ten questions
- Is there advance assurance, and does it match this round?
- Trade age: when was the first commercial sale?
- Assets and headcount: inside £350,000 and 25 FTE before this issue?
- Capacity: how much of the £250,000 remains, counting grants?
- Instrument: new ordinary shares for cash, nothing engineered?
- Any preferences or protections that could offend the risk tests?
- My connection: family holdings under 30%, no employment planned?
- Who files the SEIS1, and what is their track record on certificates?
- Any exit or restructure plans inside the three-year window?
- Does the data room match the standard pack?
The due diligence checklist red-flag screen
- Tax relief leads the pitch
- Guarantees of any kind
- Deadline pressure without paperwork readiness
- Reluctance to share the assurance application
- Answers that arrive as reassurance instead of documents
Any single red flag pauses the deal; two end it. The reliefs this discipline protects are set out in the reliefs guide, and the honest odds in the risks page.
Using the due diligence checklist without fooling yourself
Time-box it: an hour for the business ten on a small cheque, a day with references on a large one, per the proportionality rule in the full guide. Enforce the documents-only rule ruthlessly, reassuring phone answers do not tick boxes, and write one line per question as you go; the deals that later go wrong are usually the ones where the notes stop halfway. Finally, score nothing. The list is not a points system where 17 out of 20 passes; it is a conversation with your own judgement, and any unanswered scheme question is a full stop until answered.
