POTENTIAData minimization in due diligence: checking less, learning more
One of GDPR's core principles, data minimization, says you should only process the personal data actually necessary for your stated purpose. Applied to founder diligence, that's a useful discipline even for funds that couldn't care less about the regulation: it forces the question of which signals actually predict anything.
A ten-factor scoring model that asks "does the narrative hold together over time," "is the team's skill mix matched to the problem," "is decision-making concentrated in one person" is targeted. A folder of everything a search engine could find about someone is not — it's a pile, not a signal.
Minimization pressure tends to push diligence tools toward the former. Instead of "gather everything, sort it out later," the process becomes "decide upfront what actually matters, and only collect that." It's both the more defensible approach under GDPR and, separately, the more useful one for actually making a decision.
See how a consent-based check actually works.