Served & Found
A Tempe startup partner or investor: what to verify first
Tempe produces a steady supply of new companies. Some come out of Arizona State University, some out of the office parks in south Tempe, and some out of a conversation at a bar on Mill Avenue. Plenty of them are real. A few are a pitch deck, a borrowed office and a founder with a history you would want to know about.
If someone is asking you to invest, co-sign a lease, merge your small business with theirs, or hand over a large deposit, a few days of due diligence is cheap compared with what you stand to lose. Some of it you can do yourself in an evening. The rest is where private investigators earn their fee.
What you can check tonight
Start with the company itself. The Arizona Corporation Commission runs an online entity search where you can look up an Arizona LLC or corporation by name. Check that the company exists, that it's in good standing, when it was formed, and who is listed as a member, manager, officer or statutory agent. A company that says it's been operating for six years and was formed last spring deserves a question.
Then search the people. Put each principal's name into a web search with "Arizona," "lawsuit" and "fraud," and also try it with the names of past companies they mention. Look at their professional profiles for gaps or overlapping roles.
Search the courts. Maricopa County Superior Court handles larger civil cases, and the county's justice courts handle smaller civil claims, evictions and some misdemeanors. Both offer ways to look up case information. A history of being sued by former partners, landlords or investors is a pattern worth noticing, even if every case settled.
Where a private investigator adds real value
Self-research tends to stop at the first page of results. A licensed private investigator will usually go further in four directions.
Identity and history. Confirming the person is who they say they are, with the education, licenses and job history they claim. Founders who invent a degree or a past exit sometimes leave tracks in old records, archived web pages and former employers.
Litigation and judgments across states. A person who moved to Tempe from somewhere else may have their real history in another state's courts. Many private investigators have access to commercial databases that pull court, lien and judgment records together, though those records still need checking against the source.
Related companies. A founder whose last three LLCs were dissolved soon after taking investor money is telling you something. Tracing the web of entities, shared addresses and registered agents is tedious, and it's exactly what a private investigator does every week.
Discreet interviews. With your agreement, a private investigator can talk to former partners, landlords or employees. People who won't leave an online review will often tell a stranger on the phone that they lost money.
What a private investigator won't do
Due diligence is research, not espionage. A legitimate private investigator won't hack email, pull someone's bank or phone records without legal authority, or record calls they aren't part of. Arizona private investigators are licensed by the Department of Public Safety, and you can check a license yourself through the DPS Public Services Portal. Our guide to verifying an Arizona private investigator license shows how.
If anyone offers to get you a person's bank statements for a fee, walk away. Evidence obtained that way can hurt you more than help, and so can the conversation with the police afterwards.
Matching the effort to the stakes
There's no fixed scope. For a co-signed office lease, a quick check of the entity, the principals' court history and a couple of reference calls might be enough. For a six-figure investment in a Tempe tech company, you may want a fuller background on every principal and a look at related businesses in other states.
Tell the private investigator what decision you're trying to make and when. "I sign on the 15th, and I want to know if anything in his history should stop me" is a far better brief than "find everything." Ask what the work will cost, what format the report will take, and whether it will cite sources you can check.
A Tempe-specific note
Because of ASU, a lot of founders here are young and have thin records. A thin record isn't a red flag by itself. It just means the diligence shifts toward the deal: who else has invested, what the company actually owns, and whether the people around the founder are who they say they are.
The Tempe private investigators page lists private investigators who are members of the Arizona Association of Licensed Private Investigators (AALPI), and the East Valley list covers Mesa, Chandler and nearby towns. If the deal involves surveillance as well as records work, our piece on where the legal lines sit for surveillance in Tempe explains the limits.
More local listings are on the Tempe page. Before your first call, write down the date you have to decide by and the amount of money at stake.
See the board: everyone in Tempe · private investigators only.