Owner-independent operations
The business runs without you for a week. For a month. The seller-staying-on clause shrinks from years to months.
Sell at a premium. Without staying chained for five years.
Buyers don't pay top dollar for revenue. They pay for the kind of business that runs without you. We're the operational infrastructure that turns the company you built into the asset they're paying for.
NDA on day one. Six to eighteen months out is ideal.
The valuation gap
What you think you're selling. What they're paying for.
Most owners come to market with a number in mind. Sophisticated buyers — PE, search funds, strategic acquirers — are pricing something else entirely. The gap between those two becomes the multiple-discount they apply at the LOI.
The visible business
What you think you're selling
- Revenue
- Customer relationships
- Products and services
- Brand reputation
- Years in business
The transferable asset
What they're actually paying for
- Predictability
- Transferability — does it run without you?
- Operational maturity
- Information quality and reportability
- Reduced acquisition risk
Pre-sale prep is the work of closing that gap before buyers show up. The earlier you start, the more multiple you keep.
What exit-ready actually looks like
Six traits buyers price into the multiple.
These are the traits that consistently show up in QoE reports, diligence questionnaires, and IOI/LOI math. Score yourself honestly. The gaps are where Discovery focuses.
Diligence-ready financials
Clean monthly accrual reporting. Normalized EBITDA. Add-backs documented. QoE-ready before the QoE is run.
Operational visibility
CAC, churn, margin by line, customer concentration, pipeline conversion. Answers in minutes, not days.
Customer & vendor diversification
No single customer over 20%. No single referral source over 40%. No vendor dependency that breaks the business if they pull out.
Documented operating systems
SOPs, onboarding flows, decision rules. The company can be transferred with the documents, not just with you.
Management bench
At least one layer of leadership who doesn't route every decision through you. Buyers pay extra for management depth.
The Discovery report
Five written deliverables. Diligence-ready.
Each one maps directly to the questions buyers (and their advisors) will ask. Take the report to your banker, your QoE provider, your buyer's analyst — the picture is the same.
- 01
Operations map
How work moves through your business, end-to-end. Where data lives, where handoffs happen, where the friction sits.
Use for · Operating model overview · diligence Q&A
- 02
Transferability & gap heatmap
Eight functional areas scored across visibility, reliability, and actionability. Every gap priced in dollars per quarter.
Use for · Transition-risk pricing · multiple uplift planning
- 03
Concentration & key-person risk register
Every customer concentration, every vendor dependency, every key-person risk. Ranked by what would break first.
Use for · Data room disclosure · risk management
- 04
Priced cleanup roadmap
Phase 1, 2, 3. What to clean up before listing, sequenced by ROI on multiple uplift. Priced upfront.
Use for · Pre-sale prep budget · timeline to listing
- 05
Leadership walkthrough
Ninety minutes with you, your banker if you have one, and your team. Every page walked, every tradeoff discussed live.
Use for · Alignment · go/no-go on cleanup phases
Start here
The Discovery.
Two to three weeks of work for $7,500. Five written deliverables that surface the institutional knowledge in your operations. And what it would cost to make it work for the whole business.
Fee
$7,500
Flat fee. Yours to keep.
Timeline
2–3 wks
Kickoff to leadership walkthrough.
Five written deliverables
- Operations map
- Gap heatmap (priced)
- Tooling & risk register
- Priced modernization roadmap
- Leadership walkthrough
Whether or not we build the next phase together, the Discovery is yours.
Common questions
The short answers.
Buyers discount what they can't verify.
Discovery builds the operational picture they can. Two to three weeks. $7,500 flat. The roadmap is yours regardless of what you do next.
Turnkey solutions · Roadmap you own