An independent review of what has actually been built, for technology founders. Two days or one week, fixed fee, from the former CTO and CEO of ResDiary, who still writes code.
Talk it through. No agenda needed.
It usually starts with one of these.
If one of those sounds familiar, the review is the place to start.
Two sizes, one piece of work.
from £2,000
Fee agreed on the scoping call
Where there is more than one codebase or product, or the ownership questions need real digging, it is two weeks, and you will know that from the scoping call along with the fee.
Book a callA short call to agree what is in and arrange access.
The fee is fixed and agreed on that call. The review starts once it has been paid in cleared funds.
Findings are delivered as a written report and walked through with the leadership team or board in a working session.
A written report and a prioritised list that separates what needs fixing before you go further from what can wait. Where it helps, that includes how to describe the outstanding items to an investor or an acquirer, because the answer is almost never that there is nothing outstanding.
The output is what to do next, not what to buy next. Nothing is sold on the back of a review, and any referral arrangement is disclosed before you act on a recommendation.
Read-only access to the code repositories, a look at the hosting and deployment setup, and an hour or two with whoever built or runs the system. We agree the exact list on the scoping call. I don't need production write access, and I don't need customer data.
Every review runs under my terms of business and a work statement, both signed before anything starts. The terms include a confidentiality clause covering everything you share, which lasts for five years after the work ends.
For the full review, I need the code. Documentation describes what someone meant to build, and the code shows what was actually built. The two-day initial assessment can start from documentation and interviews where code access isn't possible yet. The report then says clearly what that limits.
That's often who the review is most useful for. The report is written for the person making the decision, not for the engineers. In the working session, we go through what matters and what can wait in plain terms.
Yes, and nothing from one review is used in another. If I've worked with a direct competitor, I'll tell you before we start.
Usually within one to two weeks of the scoping call, depending on availability. Work starts once the fee has cleared and access is in place.
You hear about it straight away, not at the end. We talk it through first, then agree how it goes into the report. The aim is that you know what to do about it before anyone else asks.
Sometimes. It depends on the company and the stage, so it is decided case by case. Mention it when you get in touch.
Other ways to work together.
Some reviews end with a request to stay on: as a fractional CTO for the months it takes to act on the findings, as an adviser to the founders or the board, or doing the technical work itself.
Already know what you need? Book the call.
Technical due diligence before you invest, after you have, or when a founder has told you everything is fine.
From the river Isla in Angus.
Inver-: the mouth of a river. The point where one thing meets another.
Inverisla is led by Colin Winning. He joined ResDiary as Lead Engineer in 2010 and became CTO and then CEO. He took over as CEO with ARR at £6M and more than doubled it, through Covid. He set up a full commercial operation in Australia, and led the business through its acquisition by Reef in 2022 and by Access Group in 2023.
At Access Group he was Commercial Director for the ResDiary and DMN reservations portfolios, and then Director of Platform. That work covered moving Access Hospitality's products onto the Group platform, unifying third-party integrations into a common framework, and building a developer portal and app marketplace.
The technical side is current rather than retrospective. He still writes, builds and deploys code with the current generation of AI tooling, and still ships things that run rather than demo. That is what makes the review useful. Judging whether someone else's architecture holds up is difficult if you stopped building a decade ago.
Hospitality technology is where his pattern recognition is deepest: reservations, POS, PMS, marketplaces and the integrations between them. The pattern travels to other vertical SaaS.
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Most reviews begin with a 30-minute call to talk through where you are, what is prompting the question, and whether this is the right fit. No agenda required.
Book a callPrefer to write? Send a message and you will hear back within a working day.