Six weeks from a closed funding round, until counsel flagged compliance gaps nobody had noticed: resolved before diligence could reopen the deal.
The situation
A venture-funded startup was six weeks from closing a new round when its lead investor's counsel flagged gaps in ESOP documentation and unreconciled books from an earlier bookkeeper.
The approach
A compliance audit against the term sheet's conditions, ESOP scheme documentation rebuilt to match actual grants, and a reconciled set of financials delivered ahead of the diligence deadline.
The outcome
The round closed on the original timeline. No conditions were re-opened during diligence.
The compliance discipline that keeps a company diligence-ready year-round is covered on our Compliance & Corporate page.
How the six weeks broke down
- Weeks 1–2: full compliance audit against the term sheet's disclosure schedule, flagging every ESOP and financial-reconciliation gap before diligence formally started.
- Weeks 2–4: the ESOP scheme rebuilt from grant letters and board minutes to match actual issued options, not the scheme document's stale terms.
- Weeks 4–6: financials reconciled against the rebuilt ESOP register and delivered to the investor's counsel a full week ahead of the diligence deadline, leaving room for follow-up questions rather than racing the clock.
The pattern that matters here: diligence gaps involving ESOPs and stale bookkeeping are common enough that a lead investor's counsel checks for them by default. Catching them before diligence starts, not during it, is the difference between a condition subsequent and a closed round.
A composite, anonymized account built from the kind of engagement Clairvoyis regularly handles, not a case-by-case record of a single named client.