Investment research by industry
Diligence asks the same core questions everywhere, but each sector has its own deciding metrics and failure patterns. The VentureIQ AI adapts its analysis to the sector of each deal.
Short answer
The sectors venture investors research most are SaaS, fintech, healthtech, AI, marketplaces and climate. SaaS is judged on retention and payback, fintech on regulation and loss rates, healthtech on approvals and who pays, AI on data advantage and compute margins, marketplaces on liquidity and repeat use, and climate on cost curves and capital needs.
01
SaaS and B2B software
The most common venture category, judged mainly on recurring revenue quality.
What diligence focuses on
Net revenue retention, CAC payback, gross margin, cohort retention and how concentrated revenue is in the top customers.
Common red flags
Services revenue counted as ARR, a few customers making up most revenue, and pipeline that does not convert at the stated rate.
02
Fintech
Payments, lending, wealth and insurance technology, where regulation shapes the business.
What diligence focuses on
Licences and regulatory status, partner bank dependencies, take rate, credit losses for lenders and fraud controls.
Common red flags
Operating under a partner's licence with no fallback, gross volume presented as revenue, and loss rates measured only on young loan books.
03
Healthtech and medtech
Digital health, clinical software and devices, with long sales cycles and approval risk.
What diligence focuses on
Regulatory pathway and approvals, clinical evidence, who pays (patient, provider or insurer), data privacy compliance and sales cycle length.
Common red flags
Pilots that never convert to paid contracts, no reimbursement route, and patient data handled without proper compliance.
04
AI and data
Companies built on machine learning, where defensibility is the central question.
What diligence focuses on
Proprietary data access, model and inference costs per customer, gross margin after compute, and dependence on a single model provider.
Common red flags
A thin layer over a public model with no data advantage, margins that shrink as usage grows, and unclear rights to training data.
05
Marketplaces and e-commerce
Two-sided platforms and online retail, judged on liquidity and repeat behaviour.
What diligence focuses on
Take rate, repeat purchase rate, contribution margin per order, supply and demand balance, and customer acquisition channels.
Common red flags
Growth bought with discounts, dependence on one paid channel, and buyers and sellers who meet once then transact off-platform.
06
Climate and energy
Clean energy, carbon and industrial decarbonisation, often hardware- and capital-heavy.
What diligence focuses on
Unit cost path to parity, dependence on subsidies or policy, offtake agreements, capital needs to scale and technology readiness.
Common red flags
Economics that only work with current incentives, lab results not yet proven at scale, and capital needs far beyond the venture round.
Next step
Put it to work on a real deal
Use the free tools and references, or run a cited AI analysis on your own opportunity.