Case Studies

The Challenge

We were tasked by our client, a Fortune 20 company, to help them with a vendor selection process. The goal was to review proposals from various CRM, CMS, and other cloud solution providers and conduct a comprehensive technical evaluation around the merits of each offering. The client was having difficulty picking the winner given competing internal priorities and complexities of the offerings.

Our Approach

We began by visiting our client’s headquarters to better understand their goals and familiarize ourselves with their cloud environment and solution offerings. We then carried out extensive interviews and in-depth analysis of various vendor offerings. We soon realized the real challenge we need to solve first is not to pick a vendor, but to help our client’s senior leadership understand the more fundamental questions they need to address. In other words, it soon became clear to our client that the choice of vendor is less critical than laying the technical foundation for the organization to digitally transform itself to a stage where they can successfully use a vendor’s solution.

Through our analysis and senior leadership briefings, we helped the company address key internal technology challenges, way ahead of picking a vendor. This made the company well-positioned to eventually succeed at picking the right vendor.

The Challenge

A successful investment group based in southeast Asia had invested in a novel startup in Germany to build a phone dedicated to kids. The investor was concerned about the pace of development and wanted to make sure the team is on track in delivering an initial release of their product to the market, a much needed step to raise money and increase their runway.

Our Approach

It was quickly evident from our preliminary evaluation that there’s a more fundamental disconnect between the expectations of our investor and what the startup was working on. More importantly, we identified several critical assumptions made by the startup in terms of reliance on open-source technologies that in our opinion would eventually become an important bottleneck in their road to success. We advised our client on potential risks associated with using third-party open-source libraries for that project and helped them mitigate the risks. We also provided strategic insights to our client about the pros and cons of forking open-source mobile operating systems as the basis for launching a commercially viable product in the marketplace.

The Challenge

Our client was contemplating the three-way merger between well-known names in the travel space as part of an initial public offering via a SPAC. The key challenge the client was facing was that the companies being merged into a single entity are mature businesses with complex operations built on different technology stacks and hosted on different cloud vendors. The client hired us to help them navigate these challenges, identify opportunities for consolidation, and help them avoid costly pitfalls during the post-merger efforts.

Our Approach

We partnered with all three stakeholders to better understand their cloud infrastructure and technology stacks. Next, we conducted an in-depth analysis of software architecture, software development process, source code quality, and open-source third-party libraries used by each entity. We presented short-term and long-term considerations relevant to the merger of these companies’ technology stacks to our client. The key value-add arising from our involvement was to help each party better understand how its technology will fit the technology stack of the other stakeholders. We identified great synergies thanks to proper use and adoption of Service Oriented Architectures (i.e., discrete system components communicating with each other using APIs) by all stakeholders. We helped our client understand how this meaningfully facilitates gradual consolidation, addition, removal, and replacement of existing components without affecting other parts of the system. The three entities eventually announced a $700M+ IPO shortly after delivering our report and completing the SEC filings.

The Challenge

Our client targeted a company that started in early 2010 and focused on collecting and analyzing individual measurable health-related activities through digital gadgets. Ten years later the target company realized they fell behind the industry best practices; hence, they started to renew all their products with a modernized technology stack. Getting to the transaction time, there were two instances of the applications (the legacy and the modern one) with a notable amount of data required to be migrated to the new applications. The challenge with this assignment was the need to analyze both applications and the seamless transformability of legacy data to the new application.

Our Approach

We analyzed both applications in various aspects, including code quality, architecture, security, license compatibility, documentation, issues and bugs, and team maturity. Moreover, we checked if all the functionalities in the legacy version have been reimplemented in the new application. Finally, we audited the potential migration plans regarding data migration and process migration.

The Challenge

We were approached by a mature technology organization in the insurance sector who was going through a financing round and needed help to spin off the newly developed IP into a new business entity. The company had developed an earlier version of their insurance management software and had embarked on creating a brand new version of their product, from the ground up. The challenge was that their investors were hesitant about the feasibility of a clear carveout due to any potential overlap between the old and the new IP.

Our Approach

We first carefully examined the two products to better understand their architecture, key components, design philosophy and the technology stack they operate on. Once analyzed the structure, sequence and organization of the two software products to learn what they are made of. Armed with these insights, we conducted an in-depth comparison of the two versions of the product at various levels. We first began looking for any instance of literal code copying between the two code bases and identifying the reason behind the existence of any similarities. Next, we performed an architectural assessment and showcased to our client’s investors how these products were built on entirely different architectures, by different teams, using different programming languages, and with no meaningful overlap between the two codebases. As a result of our analysis, our client was able to successfully spin off the version 2.0 of their codebase into a new entity and seek capital from the investors.

The Challenge

Our client was an early stage startup who had developed a unique streaming media encryption scheme. The most significant company asset was entirely related to the efficiency, accuracy and uniqueness of the underlying cryptographic schemes and proprietary encoding algorithms designed by the founders. Our client wanted to receive third-party neutral subject matter expert opinion regarding its proprietary technology. The company was so early it had not even developed an actual product before learning more about the quality of their underlying cryptographic schemes.

Our Approach

In a “typical” sell-side technology due diligence project, we work with our clients to develop and subsequently execute upon a mutually agreeable scope. Such project scopes usually include a detailed assessment of the target’s software architecture as well as an evaluation of the underlying Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) practices. However, for this project, there was no “product” and no potential investor/acquirer with specific requests. We instead entirely turned our focus on performing cryptanalysis to identify weaknesses and/or information leakage in client’s unique cryptographic schemes. We first worked diligently with the client to understand their overall solution. We methodically attacked their ciphers and eventually uncovered serious flaws in the security characteristics of their solution. The client went back to square one and started re-evaluating their entire solution before doing anything else. Through our involvement, the client avoided spending significant amounts of time, energy, capital and human resources developing on an insecure foundational layer to their technology offering.

The Challenge

Our client, a Fortune 50, was contemplating making a series of investments in real estate technology startups to boost its overall technology posture. The client was evaluating offertings from two start ups with a significant amount of overlap. There were a number of challenging questions for us to address in this engagement. First, our client wanted to better learn about the amount of feature parity between the offerings of these two targets. Second, they wanted to know how these offerings complement their own technology offerings. Third, the client wanted to learn more about how well its technology stack aligns with that of either target company.

Our Approach

Before even meeting with either target, we set out to learn more about our client’s technical core competency, as well as their overall technology stack and architecture. We then met with key stakeholders to learn more about the company’s north star and priorities. Next, we met with each target individually and conducted a comprehensive assessment of their code quality, underlying architecture, SDLC, security stance and the uniqueness of their AI/ML algorithms. We then provided our client with a detailed comparative assessment of the offerings between the two targets. We also met with our key stakeholders and painted a picture of how each company’s offering aligns with their existing technology and planned roadmap. Through our findings, the client was able to make a compelling case internally, and externally on how to move forward.

The Challenge

Our client, an entity behind some of the world’s most visited web properties, was contemplating acquiring, and subsequently integrating the technology of its analytics provider into its own infrastructure. This transaction was very different from a straight investment and required addressing difficult questions about a native integration of a web analytics solution into a CMS. In addition, both our client and the target were (and still are) very highly-trafficked websites. The client needed our expert insights related to the target’s software architecture, infrastructure, devops, teams, and overall processes. Lastly, both companies relied heavily on Open Source technologies. Hence, it was important for our client to have a detailed understanding of any risks associated with the use of Open Source by the target company.

Our Approach

We performed extensive analysis of the target’s technology stack, key product components and overall code quality with an eye toward interoperability, extensibility, modularity and scalability. The client was curious to learn if a 10X traffic increase on target’s then current volumes would adversely affect their growth trajectory. We carefully examined and identified potential bottlenecks in target’s architecture and provided key insights to both our client and the target about those potential chokepoints. We also dedicated a large portion of our report to post-merger integration issues. In fact, once the transaction closed, the technical leadership from both companies heavily relied on our report to address near-term and long-term post merger integration issues. Lastly, we conducted a line by line scan of target’s source code in order to identify any third-party open-source library with problematic license types or known cybersecurity vulnerabilities. We provided detailed remediation strategies.

The Challenge

Our client, a major global energy company, was considering acquiring several well established startups to expand into a key segment in the energy market. The initial acquisition targets ranged from product and service offering to web and affiliate marketing. Because each company plays a key part in the overall client’s strategy, it’s critical for QP to examine each company’s offerings in extreme detail while keeping the overall investment theory in mind. These well established target companies already have viable products and each company has millions of lines of source code. The due diligence effort needed to pay special attention to architecture, scalability, as well as 3rd party software exposure. Our client was very involved in understanding every aspect of our investigation.

Our Approach

Because of the criticality of each company in our client’s overall strategy, we examined each of the target companies in extreme detail. We also closely involved our client in post-merger integration discussions and provided a detailed roadmap around near-term and long-term challenges and opportunities in this multi-merger initiative. QP worked closely with the target companies on the discovered issues and questions, and assisted them in fixing or addressing major ones. For the client, QP provided amendments to the final reports with the latest remediation status. The results of our due diligence effort allowed our client to mitigate meaningful risks related to open-source licensing and cybersecurity vulnerabilities in target’s source code before closing the transaction and eventually successfully entering a key energy market segment.

The Challenge

A well-known private equity (PE) firm was interested in investing into a solar energy marketing technology company. QP was tasked with evaluating the target company’s technology stacks as well as short and long term considerations of the company’s organizational structure and its personnel. A key component of the target company solution was using machine learning to build production models for fast decision making. In addition to evaluating the target company’s technical solutions, we were asked to assess the target company’s proprietary data that fed into their machine learning algorithms.

Our Approach

In addition to QP’s regular approach of evaluating the target company’s software architecture, development process, and 3rd party exposure; we also looked into the company’s core machine learning architecture and proprietary data. The proprietary data are key for the target company to develop accurate marketing models for various marketing campaigns and offerings. In addition, we helped our PE client understand the uniqueness, and the barrier to entry for the proprietary machine learning IP created by the target company. QP also looked into the target company’s organizational structure, its personnel, as well as balance between technical and non-technical staff. In the end, our client was extremely satisfied with our finding and asked us to perform another due diligence of another one of their investments.

The Challenge

We were tasked with leading the technical due diligence of a milestone transaction between a world-renowned publisher and an entity owning many of the most highly-trafficked websites in the MENA region. The key challenge our client was facing was related to the sheer number of web properties owned by the target, as well as a complex mapping between the target’s products and their underlying technology components. It was also equally important for our client to de-risk post-merger integration challenges resulting from the transaction. Lastly, our client had some concerns around some of the technical representations made by the target.

Our Approach

We spent several weeks familiarizing ourselves with target’s numerous web properties, the underlying technologies powering those properties, and reviewing technical documentation and source code shared with us. We then started looking more carefully into the provided artifacts to assess the accuracy of the representations made by the target about the volume and nature of engagements on their platform. In the course of conducting our analysis, it became increasingly clear that there was a meaningful gap between the factual information we had gathered and what was presented to our client by the target. Because of our team’s troubling findings, we started taking a closer look at the material shared with us and asked for more detailed material from the target. Eventually, we were able to uncover material issues with the facts presented by the target and helped our client avoid a major financial and technical risk associated with the contemplated transaction.

The Challenge

Our client, an angel investor, was contemplating investing in an online grocery shopping tech startup. The angel investor had limited technology knowledge in this space and the opportunity as presented had a large upside. The target startup claimed they had created a set of novel algorithms that would completely disrupt the existing online grocery purchase workflow using artificial intelligence and machine learning. The opportunity involved several difficult technological challenges which possibly translated to high risk. The client came to us seeking a detailed technical due diligence including a sense of business risk surrounding the opportunity.

Our Approach

We researched the primary high risk technical challenges and found the key issue was the ability of the system to correlate a shopping item across numerous stores. This research included performing a search of competitors in the Fast-Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) space as well as if and how they overcame this same challenge. We then spent cycles interviewing the founders to get a sense of their technical strengths, as well as their view of the key technical issues related to the opportunity. We performed detailed analysis on the team’s existing proof of concept. We ultimately found the founding team was lacking technical leadership, and where the key technical issue we identified was viewed by the leaders as resolved within the proof of concept software. We found the outsourced contracted team’s proof of concept code was poorly architected and riddled with flaws. Our report included all these elements and further included a translation of these issues into business risk. The report included recommendations on how the client may remediate and lower some of the identified business risk. In summary, our findings and assessment helped prevent major risks associated with the contemplated transaction.

The Challenge

Our client, a capital investment company in Singapore, sought to acquire three key products from a document management company in Indonesia. The first product was mature with 10 years on the market, another product has gained traction and is evolving, and the third product potentially is a key piece to tie the other two products together using blockchain but was in the initial development phase. QP was tasked to evaluate the two established products and assess the degree of completeness of the key third product. Business practices, local infrastructure and regulations in Southeast Asia also post unique challenges in this engagement.

Our Approach

Understanding the core architectural components of the target company was key to this due diligence engagement. By evaluating the architecture and scalability of the core component, we were able to identify and convey key issues behind the target company’s solutions. Our assessment and  recommendations were very specific in both development and infrastructure issues. The key third product from the target company is based on blockchain. We were able to give an independent assessment and specific recommendations to our client on how the target company can develop and deliver the blockchain component to grow the products being considered.