The Bear Group Ltd launches Zolanius, an independent due diligence practice for early-stage investors
The Bear Group Ltd today launched Zolanius™, an independent due diligence practice that assesses product and technology risk for angel, pre-seed, seed and Series A investors. The practice is built on Core and Bloat™, a classification method developed by the group's founders and applied in every assessment.
Most technical due diligence examines the codebase, the architecture and the infrastructure. That review is necessary, and Zolanius does not duplicate it. The risks that decide early-stage outcomes usually sit between the technology and the product, people and process around it. A product can pass a technical review and still lose most new users at step four of onboarding. Architecture can be clean while the consent and data experience would not survive regulatory scrutiny. An engineering team can be strong while the design function is resourced for a product half the size of the roadmap.
Zolanius assesses four domains in one engagement, product, technology, people and execution, and delivers a single verdict rather than separate reports. Both founders work directly on every assessment and neither delegates.
Core and Bloat is the classification underneath the read. Every part of a system goes into exactly one of four categories: Core, what the product must do; Platform, what it needs to operate; Bloat, cost carried without return; and No-Go, what was considered and consciously rejected. The categories are not fixed. Things drift, almost always toward Bloat, and catching that while removal is still cheap is the point of the method. It is published in full at dirkbauer.com/core-and-bloat.html and is also used in the group's advisory work.
"Most of what we find could have been found earlier," said Dirk Bauer, co-founder of Zolanius and a director of The Bear Group Ltd. "It usually was not, because nobody was asked to look at the product, the technology, the people and the process at the same time."
"Teams usually know something feels off long before they can explain why," said Waranya Chamrat, co-founder of Zolanius and a director of The Bear Group Ltd. "An investor is buying whatever the team has not been able to name yet."
Three engagements are offered at published fees. A Stage One Deal Screen at USD 5,000 delivers a written briefing on the most material product and technology risks within three working days, and states no verdict. A Stage Two assessment from USD 10,000 covers all four domains with findings, severity and a stated verdict in ten to fifteen working days. A Product Architecture Review from USD 15,000 assesses a company already invested in and delivers a remediation roadmap.
The practice publishes its independence policy in full. Zolanius takes no equity, commission or success fee in any company it assesses. It does not assess a company either founder has advised in the previous six months, does not take work from a company for six months after assessing it, and publishes nothing derived from an engagement. Capacity is three assessments a month.
[Open item: one sentence on availability to investors in the United States, if that is accurate today. Fill or delete before publishing.]
About The Bear Group Ltd
The Bear Group Ltd is a Hong Kong holding company founded by Dirk Bauer and Waranya Chamrat. It operates Zolanius and holds the Core and Bloat trademark. Dirk Bauer has thirty years in technology leadership across eleven industries and has led distributed engineering teams since 2005. Waranya Chamrat has twelve years in product strategy and UX research across SaaS, IoT, fintech, e-commerce and enterprise. More at thebear.group.
Press contact
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The Bear Group Ltd, Unit 2904-05, 29/F, Universal Trade Centre, 3 Arbuthnot Road, Hong Kong S.A.R.
Zolanius™ and Core and Bloat™ are trademarks of The Bear Group Ltd.