Work record / Capital / Medical device US entry
A medical device heads for the US: diligence before the raise
An Irish medical-device company wanted to raise money for a US launch and start investor outreach straight away. I put diligence first, and it turned up five problems before any investor saw a page.
The seat
I was the engagement lead, working with Prince Capital, from February to June 2026. The work ran across Ireland and the United States through Common Ground. Prince Capital was set up as the licensed placement advisor on the raise.
| Sector | Medical devices |
|---|---|
| Type of work | Buy-side and capital-readiness diligence for a US entry |
| Where | Ireland and the United States |
| Years | February to June 2026 |
| How long | Five months |
| Through | Common Ground; Prince Capital as placement advisor on the raise. |
| Credits | Common Ground Jesse Fowler, Engagement lead Alex Prince, Co-engaged on the capital track through Prince Capital; worked the buyer sequencing |
What I was brought in to decide
The company already sold its product overseas and had a clinical file to back it. Its plan for the US was to license, handing the product to US manufacturers and retail partners and skipping any US manufacturing of its own. The owner meant to raise $2 million to $3 million for the launch, and he asked for the data room and the first investor outreach together, in one week.
I do not name the company or the owner. Prince Capital, the licensed placement advisor, was meant to carry the raise. Common Ground took diligence, the data room and the plan for entering the market.
What we did
- My call, and Common Ground's, was to do diligence before outreach. If an investor's lawyers find a flaw, the owner's credibility takes the hit with every investor he meets next. If we find the same flaw first, we lose a little time.
- I limited the diligence to the two categories that can end a raise, not just reprice it: freedom to operate, meaning trademarks, patents and third-party IP, and the economics, meaning royalty and exclusivity terms. That meant searching the registers, reading the licensing and distribution agreements, and phoning every counterparty the pitch deck mentioned.
- What the diligence found shaped a data room of fourteen files. The one that mattered most was a stress test that argued against the company the way a doubtful investor would, holding the five findings with a source beside each.
- Each finding went into a register scored two ways, by severity and by how easily an outsider would stumble on it. I gave the register to the owner myself, as the list of things to settle before the company faced diligence in the US.
- We sorted potential investors into tiers by what each could stomach, and put written disclosure in front of every tier. The company would never face its least forgiving investors first.
- We also wrote the go-to-market plan that the raise was supposed to fund. Whether to go through a regulated medical channel or a consumer and hospitality one came after the exclusivity and royalty findings, and we fixed the pitch deck. The go-to-market arrangement stays tentative and unsigned. If Common Ground brings the owner a deal, we share the work equally.
- We did the diligence before any fee was agreed. The remediation proposal that followed was priced at 1.6 to 2.4 percent of the raise it would protect, and the owner turned it down. The lesson became a scope template that every capital-readiness engagement of ours starts from. Diligence carries its own fixed fee, set before the work starts and due whatever we find. Remediation gets priced afterward, from the findings, as a menu of scopes.
Results
- Inside two weeks we had five findings, with no investor yet shown anything: a trademark conflict, a royalty issue, an exclusivity problem, a question about third-party IP, and a distribution deal that was already dead.
- We delivered a data room, a gate on which buyer tier hears from us first, and a go-to-market plan, each shaped by what the diligence found.
- The owner chose not to fund the remediation phase, and what to do after the findings is his decision. No capital moved on a claim nobody had examined.
The lesson
Scope diligence to the findings that can end a raise, not everything that could reprice it, and get those answers before outreach begins.
Questions about Medical device US entry, answered
Firm record
Common Ground keeps its own account of this engagement: Medical device US entry on the Common Ground wiki.