I opened the repo, closed the laptop and made a coffee

I’d been asked for a technical review ahead of an investment. The demo was gorgeous: smooth, fast. The investors loved it. Of course they did: that’s what demos are for.

I don’t look at the demo. I look at what happens when something breaks. This is what I check first.

Whether passwords and access keys are written into the code itself. Spoiler: more often than you’d think.

Whether only one person knows how it gets deployed. If that person leaves, the product leaves with them.

How many dependencies haven’t been updated in years. Each one is a door nobody is watching.

Whether there are tests. Or whether the test is the founder clicking through it by hand before every release.

What happens if users have to be multiplied by ten tomorrow.

The problem is almost never a bad team. It’s a team in a hurry, and hurry gets paid back with interest. Technical debt, they call it. Debt, full stop, I’d say.

An investor who doesn’t look at the code is buying a car for its paint job. It might work out. Crossing the road without looking might work out too.

If you’re about to invest in a software company, buy one or sign a big deal with one, get someone to look under the bonnet before you sign. We do it: price and timeline on the first call, and within days you know what you’re buying.

If you’d rather trust the demo, that’s an option too. But then don’t write to us when it breaks. Or do.