Intelligence desk · on the buyer's side

The analyst on your side of the table.

Due diligence is the anchor: an investor‑grade report on one company, every material claim checked against its source, one name signing. The same desk also screens your pipeline, reads the sector, and sanity‑checks the price before you overpay.

One flat fixed quote, in writing · no retainer, no call · backtest it on a deal you already closed

Backtested blind · real deal, real outcome

We ran this engine blind on a deal that later went bankrupt. It said do not close.

We did not predict the bankruptcy, and we do not claim to have. We said the deal could not be underwritten on the information available, and named what had to be closed first. Read the backtest.

From the published sample

Proceed, with conditions

Anysphere (Cursor): a $100M to ~$2B ARR ramp in 13 months, with a broken margin underneath. The verdict sits on page one, the reasons directly under it.

Read the full brief
Free

The backtest. Send a deal you already closed, grade us against what your team found.

Where this sits in the market

What diligence costs everywhere else.

Three rungs, and a gap in the middle where most SMB deals actually live.

Under $750

Opinions about an idea. Polls, automated reports, gig-site reviews. Nobody on this rung opens a P&L.

$199 to $750

A screening. A 45-minute call, or a pre-LOI vetting opinion. Useful, but not a document a lender can use.

From $11,000

The full written report. Three to four weeks of engagement, calls along the way, priced for deals far larger than most SMB acquisitions.

Verdict puts the full written report at the screening price. $750 flat, 48 hours, async, forwardable. And when the deal justifies the full desk, it starts at $2,500, still under a quarter of the market's entry rung. The full comparison.

By the numbers

Formats PDFDOCXBRIEFMEMO
Quality gates 3

Adversarial critique, machine-checked claim table, consistency linter.

Report depth 10 sections

Each the depth of senior analyst work, sourced and signed.

Express 48h

Express turnaround. Standard lands in five days.

Full investigation From $2,500

One flat written quote per engagement. Useful, or your money back.

Micro-DD $750 flat

The 48-hour red-flag brief for $250K to $5M deals.

"Couldn't I just ask a chatbot?" A single prompt gives you a plausible summary. Verdict researches ten dimensions separately, checks each claim against its cited source, and is built to hunt for what's wrong, not smooth it over. See the method, or the honest case for a machine at all.

How it works

Three steps, no black box.

01

You send the name

The company and the decision you're weighing. One flat written quote before any work starts.

02

The desk investigates

Ten research dimensions, every material claim checked against its source, three gates before delivery.

03

The verdict lands

Proceed, conditions, renegotiate, or walk. Page one, signed, in five days or 48 hours on Express.

Inside step 02 Ten research lanes Synthesis Adversarial critique Claim table Consistency linter The verdict See the method
How we tested ourselves

We graded the desk before we sold it.

3/ 3 published

Before selling a single report, we ran Verdict head-to-head against three published investigations and published the finding-by-finding comparison, misses included. Read it and disagree.

Amprius vs a published short thesis10/10 red flags
Mercor vs an investigative feature7/9 findings, gaps disclosed
FTAI Aviation vs a forensic short reportSame direction, reached blind

An internal comparison, fully disclosed, misses on the record. No third party has graded Verdict yet.

The artifact

This is what lands in your inbox.

Not a score, not a dashboard: a written brief with the verdict on page one, the thesis stated plainly, and the findings ranked. Researched entirely from public sources and published in full, misses on the record.

Read the full sample
Executive brief · published samplePage 01

Anysphere (Cursor)

Proceed, with conditions

A pre-close, structure-aware position: now a bet on the SpaceX $60B all-stock deal closing and your spot in the preference stack, not on Cursor's standalone SaaS economics.

01ARR ramp historically exceptional, roughly $100M to ~$2B in 13 months, but the margin underneath is broken: ~-30% blended gross margin in 2025.
02The kill-condition is coupled to the fix: disintermediation accelerates precisely when Composer's substitution succeeds.
What it catches

Anatomy of a red flag.

A real finding starts as one clause buried in a filing. Here's how a diligence-grade flag comes out the other side. Illustrative example.

Buried in the filing

Revenue for the period was $48.2M, of which $19.1M (40%) was attributable to a single customer under a master agreement expiring in 14 months. No related concentration risk is discussed in the offering materials.

How Verdict reads it

[High] Customer concentration

One customer is ~40% of revenue on a contract that lapses inside the deal's payback window, and the risk appears nowhere in the seller's materials.

Source: Form 10-K, Note 12 (Segment & major-customer concentration), cross-checked against the CIM.

Who it's for

Built for the people writing the check.

Angels & syndicates

A second, unconflicted read before you commit to a round.

Search funds & ETA

Diligence on an acquisition target without a full advisory bill.

Secondary & SPV buyers

An outside-in check on a company you can't get into the data room of.

M&A advisors

A sourced first-pass so your team's hours go to the hard calls.

One company per report. A handful of reports a week. The depth is the point, so the queue stays short on purpose.

The full desk

One desk for the whole deal.

Due diligence is the anchor. The same signed, sourced discipline runs the length of the buyer's journey, from the first listing to the final number.

Every engagement backed by the Verdict guarantee: useful, or your money back.

Selling? The other side of the table

Before a buyer's diligence finds it, find it yourself.

The same engine, run for the seller before the listing goes live. Earnings rebuilt from the raw books, add-backs flagged while there is still time to document or drop them, findings delivered as a fix list, ordered by cost at the table.

A disclosed issue is priced once. A discovered one is priced twice. The broker usually commissions it. The seller is who it protects. The books decide, not the storefront.

Not an appraisal: it does not tell you what to ask, it tells you what your asking price can survive. One side per deal. Verdict never advises buyer and seller on the same transaction.

Prepare a listing Read a sample review (PDF) Scoped per listing · 48 hours · async

Have a company in mind?

Send the name and the decision you're weighing. The verdict lands in five days, or 48 hours on Express.

One flat written quote per engagement · every claim sourced or labelled

The report is the start, not the end. Watch keeps the file live after delivery.

Backed by the Verdict guarantee: useful, or your money back.