Digital Due Diligence: The Secret Weapon of Successful Investors

Published: August 5, 2019

Author: Joe Kerschbaum

Venture capitalists and private equity firms make their livelihoods on assessing risk and opportunity of potential portfolio companies. Industry landscapes, competitive threats, unique selling propositions – diagnosing those factors is fundamental to successful investments.
 

Where investors may have a blind spot is digital marketing, where a treasure chest of data and insights can help keep investors from taking unnecessary risk – or reveal latent growth opportunity that could have a tremendous payoff down the road.
What kind of insights? Consider the most frequent questions we’ve answered for some of Silicon Valley’s most high-powered investors:
– How much opportunity is there if the target company tried to scale digital media spend?
– What would happen if Amazon started competing in our target company’s vertical?
– Is the website of the target company optimized for the action we want the user to take?
– Will Google’s new products (e.g. Knowledge Graph, App Carousel, Hotel Search) steal traffic from the target company?
– Was the site recently hit with a penalty, and what was the opportunity cost of that penalty?
– Is the target company currently using the right media mix to achieve its acquisition goals?
– Is the company going to be on the right side of Google after taking into account its recent algorithm changes?
– Are there major threats in the space that would artificially inflate costs as we look to scale?
These questions target both short- and long-term implications for a company’s ability to grow and scale. 3Q’s digital due diligence can reveal more about a company’s potential for growth (and risk), especially hidden in paid search and paid social accounts. If you’re an investor, or a company looking to attract investors, consider the insights to be gained from the digital landscape. Learn more about digital due diligence services at 3Q Digital.