Curious how searchers approach Commercial Due Diligence (CDD)

Hi everyone, I’m trying to better understand how searchers approach commercial diligence during acquisitions and would really appreciate hearing how people here handle it in practice. For context, when I say Commercial Due Diligence (CDD) I’m referring to analysis focused on validating the revenue and market assumptions behind an acquisition, for example: 1. Market size and growth dynamics 2. Competitive landscape and substitutes 3. Customer demand drivers and switching behavior 4. Pricing power and margin sustainability 5. Customer concentration and revenue risk In larger PE transactions this work is often done by consulting firms, but search fund deals obviously operate very differently, smaller teams, and sometimes the searcher doing most of the analysis themselves. I’m curious how this typically plays out in the search community. For those who have gone through a deal (or are currently diligencing one): 1. Do searchers typically handle the commercial work themselves, or bring in outside help? 2. If external help is used, what type of work is most useful? (e.g., market sizing, competitive mapping, customer interviews, etc.) 3. At what stage would you consider bringing in external analysis? Pre-LOI, confirmatory diligence, or post-close strategy work? 4. Are there specific situations where outside commercial validation becomes more important? For example unfamiliar industries, aggressive growth assumptions, investor requests, etc. I’m asking mostly out of curiosity to understand how diligence actually works in search-fund acquisitions, which seems quite different from larger PE transactions. Would really appreciate hearing about people’s experiences. Thanks in advance.