Due diligence found 15 “temporary” integrations from 2019 still running in production. The acquisition deal died that afternoon.
A company I know was in acquisition talks. Good product, solid revenue, strong team. The deal was valued around EUR5M. Then due diligence started on the data platform.
No documentation. No tests. No lineage. Fifteen integrations labeled “temporary” that had been running since 2019. Schema changes deployed without version control. The data team knew where things lived - but only because they’d memorized it.
The acquirer’s technical team estimated EUR800K and 12 months just to stabilize the platform before they could integrate it. They walked. The founders lost their exit.
This is what most people miss about technical debt. It’s not just an engineering problem. It’s enterprise risk. When the bill comes due, it’s not the engineers who pay - it’s the founders, the shareholders, the people who assumed “it works” meant “it’s fine.”
The thing that could have prevented this: quarterly platform health audits. Not comprehensive. Just honest. “What would break if someone looked closely?”
Would your data platform pass due diligence today?