Independent Due Diligence

A Second Set of Expert Eyes, Before You Commit

If you are the kind of person good opportunities find, you already know the feeling. A founder offers you a piece of the next round. A friend swears by a stock. A sponsor sends a deck for a fund that sounds compelling and reads beautifully. The upside looks real. So does the risk of being wrong, and evaluating it alone, under a deadline, is harder than anyone admits.

We do not assume we have a monopoly on good ideas. Some of the most valuable work we do begins when a client brings us something and asks a simple question: what are we missing?

An Independent Read, With No Commission on the Answer

Would you be open to running it past a team whose only job, in that moment, is to find what could go wrong and what could go right? That is what independent due diligence is for. We are not selling you the deal. We are helping you see it clearly before your capital is committed.

What We Help You Vet

  • A public stock or concentrated position you are considering adding, trimming, or holding.
  • A private venture or fund that landed on your desk, where the materials are persuasive and the risks are buried.
  • A real estate or operating deal a partner brought you.
  • The "alternatives" Wall Street markets, where ordinary risk is often repackaged under an expensive label. We help you tell the genuine article from the merely well-marketed.

How We Look at It

Our review is disciplined and conflict-aware. The team brings CFA-grade analytical rigor to a consistent set of questions:

  • The economics. What truly drives the return, and is the thesis sound or simply well-told?
  • The risk. We define risk as the permanent loss of capital, not short-term price movement. What could impair this for good?
  • The structure and fees. Who gets paid, when, and how much, and what does that leave for you?
  • Liquidity and tax. What are you giving up, for how long, and what does it do to your tax picture?
  • The fit. Most important, does it belong in your plan at all, given your goals, your other holdings, and your tolerance for loss?

What You Walk Away With

Sometimes the answer is yes, and here is how to size it. Sometimes it is not now, or not this one. Either way, you make the decision with a clearer view of the trade-offs. For clients with access to genuine deal flow, having that capability on call is its own form of wealth.

Bring us the next opportunity that lands on your desk. We will tell you what we see.

Common Questions

Can Whitwell & Co. review an investment I bring to you?

Yes. Clients regularly bring us a public stock, a private venture, a fund, or a real estate deal and ask us to vet it. We review it independently on its economics, risk, structure, fees, liquidity, tax impact, and fit with your broader plan.

Do you charge a commission on deals you review?

Our role is independent and advisory. We are not compensated by the sponsors of the opportunities you bring, so the read you get is about the merits, based on your individual circumstances.

What kinds of opportunities can you evaluate?

Publicly traded stocks and concentrated positions, private ventures and funds, real estate and operating deals, and the “alternatives” that are often repackaged ordinary risk. We help you separate genuine opportunities from well-marketed ones.

Have Something You Want Vetted?

The next time an opportunity lands on your desk, you do not have to evaluate it alone. Bring it to us, and we will tell you what we see. We do not believe in pressure or hard pitches. We believe in the right relationship with the right people at the right time.

Schedule a Conversation

Whitwell & Co. is an SEC-registered investment adviser. Any review is based on your individual circumstances and is not a recommendation to buy or sell any security. All investing involves risk, including the possible loss of principal.

Watch

Due diligence in two minutes.

The investor's dilemma. How investors weigh potential reward against the risk taken to pursue it, why higher-return opportunities usually carry more uncertainty, and what due diligence examines before capital is committed.

Read the transcript

A lot of people buy a rental home, a rental property. What's your cost of debt? Five and a half percent. So you have negative cash flow. So really, what that is, from my perspective, is a negative cash flow, relatively low rate of return investment that you have massively levered up.

How you actually win, and the risk

And really, the way that you win is if you have fixed rate debt and we either have massive inflation or we have a really incredible booming economy and prices go up as wealth is shared. You're chasing appreciation, which means that today you actually have negative margin of safety, because you have negative cash flow.

Control what you can

And so that would be an example of something where the idea is: worry about the things that you can control, and try, by the grace of God, to just accept that which you cannot. And it's hard advice to live by, but it will lift the burdens off your chest if you work on that. And so from an investor standpoint, what do I control? I can control whether I get into this deal or not. Do I want to get into a deal where I have negative cash flow, massive leverage, and no margin of safety?

Transcript edited for readability from the video. Machine-transcribed; may contain minor errors.