Skip to content
TeamCareersOur values

Join us

We're always looking for talented engineers.

View open positions
EventsPodcastFree Range ManagementBridging Code and Capital

Next events

Want to join one of our next events? Check our calendar.

View calendar
Software engineeringAI engineeringCTO as a serviceAudits & technical due diligenceRecruitingCTO coachingProduct management

About this service

Build scalable, maintainable software with our experienced engineering teams. We deliver high-quality code and best practices that help your product succeed.

Go to service

Specialisations

Back-endFront-endMobileAI

Newsletter

Investor Insights

Field notes from technical due diligence, for people who invest in software companies.

Once a month we write to the investors we work with about what we have seen inside software companies recently: the claims that held up, the ones that did not, and the questions that would have surfaced the difference earlier. Reading it requires no code.

Written by the team behind 190+ technical due diligences for investors across Europe.

Get the next issue

Free, once a month, unsubscribe in one click. We send a confirmation link first, so nobody can sign you up without your say.

Every issue

Four short parts, written to be read between two meetings

Three things we saw

Findings from recent technical due diligences, with the company names removed and the lesson kept.

Three questions for your next board meeting

Each finding turned into something you can ask a founder or CTO without reading a line of code.

A word from Andreas

Our CEO Andreas Creten on something he saw recently, from the price of a GPU to AI guardrails that turned out to be polite requests.

Where to meet us

Leadership dinners, conference talks and the occasional book launch.

From the latest issue

Rules or constraints?

Issue eleven, September 2026, was about AI guardrails. A rule says what should happen; a constraint decides what can. Andreas on why a model should not write its own, and three findings from recent audits, names removed.

The AI use in the interview was not the AI use in the repository.

The team described a modest, careful use of AI. The codebase showed generated code, pull requests and documentation throughout. A policy that lives in people's heads is a rule, and rules drift.

The strictest control guarded the wrong door.

A company worked hard to keep its code away from outside AI models, while access to production was broad and credentials were shared and stored unencrypted.

AI spend and AI use rarely line up.

Significant money went into AI experimentation, little of it reached the product, and the team had no shared way of working with AI.

Subscribers got the full issue, including the three questions to take into the board meeting. The archive stays with subscribers, so the next issue, in late October, is the first one you will see.

Subscribe to Investor Insights

Why subscribe

Four reasons it earns a place in your inbox

Once a month

One issue a month, so it never piles up in your inbox.

Short

Five minutes to read, and no code in it.

From Andreas, and replies reach him

It comes from Andreas, and when you hit reply the answer lands in his inbox.

Free, and easy to leave

It costs nothing, and every issue has an unsubscribe link at the bottom.

Previous issues

What we have written about so far

Each issue went to subscribers only, so this list gives the subjects and nothing more.

  1. #10Claims and artefactsAugust 2026
  2. #9What is your portfolio actually getting for its AI spend?June 2026
  3. #8What to look for beyond the codeApril 2026
  4. #7Your portfolio companies can double engineering output without hiringMarch 2026
  5. #6A book on the economics of software engineeringFebruary 2026
  6. #5Behind the AI shineNovember 2025
  7. #4LegacyAugust 2025
  8. #3How AI accelerates engineering teamsJune 2025
  9. #2You can't delegate accountabilityMay 2025
  10. #1Patterns from recent technical due diligencesMarch 2025
Get the next one