The whole transaction, first call to wire. Days of your time, not months.
A first call commits you to nothing. If you have a board or investors, here is how this process reports to them →
The first is yours. We lead the other three.
Already decided? Then your process starts at movement two – though we will still ask the win-of-wins question before we approach a buyer, because it decides who the buyers are. The same four movements, stage by stage and with the evidence on how often they work, are in chapter 1 of the Founder’s M&A Reference.
- 1DecideYou decide
- 2PrepareWe lead
- 3CompeteWe lead
- 4CloseWe lead
1 · Decide
- What happens
- Valuation, options, and the win-of-wins question. Sometimes it ends here, on our advice.
- Your part
- The decision. It is the only one we cannot make for you.
2 · Prepare
- What happens
- Financials reconciled, the story built, the weaknesses a buyer will find repaired before they find them.
- Your part
- Answer questions. Approve what goes out in your name.
3 · Compete
- What happens
- Buyers approached with a written thesis, staged information, and a calendar that holds.
- Your part
- The management meetings, and the decisions only the owner can take.
4 · Close
- What happens
- Diligence managed, terms negotiated, the deal you signed defended to completion.
- Your part
- Keep running the business. This is the stretch where founders normally stop doing that.
What you hold at the end of month one. This is what the retainer funds, and it is yours whether or not the process goes to market.
- A valuation.
Built on your own diligenced numbers, with its downside case.
- A buyer universe.
With a written thesis for every priority name.
- A normalised financial package.
And the reconciliations behind it.
- The transaction narrative.
The case a buyer’s board will be asked to approve.
- A data-room plan.
With the disclosure staging – what is released, to whom, and when.
- A named risk list.
Each item marked fix, disclose or price.
- The decision on whether to launch at all.
Taken with the valuation and the risk list in hand, not before.
One process. Two workloads – deliberately unequal.
The operating timeline as we plan it: what we carry, what only you can do, and where each stage tends to fail.
- Financial normalisation, one accounting basis
- Legal & contractual readiness, with counsel
- Data room built before market
- Documented thesis per prioritised buyer
- Working sessions only you can lead
- Finance team's load, planned with them
Common failure mode: discovery – the issue found now is context; found later by a buyer, it's leverage.
- Staged, code-named outreach – thesis, not solicitation
- Blind profile → NDA → named teaser → data room in tranches
- Competitive rounds sequenced
- Run the company
Common failure mode: a leak scare – there is a protocol, agreed before market, not improvised.
- Offers structured against each other
- Price and structure negotiated together
- Q&A discipline; holding the tension
- Management presentations, prepared and rehearsed
- The decisions only the owner can take
Common failure mode: a buyer going quiet; an offer whose structure needs more examination than its headline.
- Conditions tracked daily
- Definitive agreement, clause by clause with counsel
- Escrow, working capital, deferred elements engineered
- Run your company – its performance is itself leverage
- The final signing week
Common failure mode: the re-trade – preparation changes the ground the conversation starts on.
Timeline as published on this page; the We/You distribution is illustrative – about 67 founder hours on the counted completed-mandate average, tracked on every mandate. Not a guarantee of duration.
All three founding partners work every full mandate. This is who does what on yours.
The buyer’s case: thesis, negotiation, structure.
The numbers: valuation, financial preparation, the data room.
The process: execution, buyer coordination, the timetable.
Firm rule Named on the engagement letter; the people you meet on the first call are the people who run the mandate. The three, in full →
Two numbers, counted.
Three things we do that many sale processes do not.
We have been inside earn-outs as sellers, which is why we negotiate the mechanism early rather than accepting a number and arguing about the definition later. Deferred consideration you do not collect was never part of the price.
Within the first month, once your documents are in, we build the full valuation – comparable multiples, precedent transactions, discounted cash flow, and where each likely buyer sits in that range. Institutional grade, defended, and yours to keep. A founder who knows their own range negotiates differently for the whole process.
Your lawyer stays your lawyer and your accountant stays your accountant. We prepare the company for legal and financial diligence and work alongside them; we do not replace them, and we take no fee that depends on them being replaced.
Every prioritised buyer arrives with a documented thesis, before we make contact.
A list of logos is not intelligence. What decides your outcome sits inside the buyer: who sponsors an acquisition, what their committee has approved before and at what multiple, which diligence findings move their price and which they treat as noise – and which alternative they are really weighing you against, including building it themselves. Every priority buyer is approached with a documented case, built around how that buyer actually makes acquisition decisions.
A list is a commodity. A decision map is the work.
Ten names from a database – beside one buyer actually understood, with the provenance of each insight stated.
Illustrative map. Provenance tags – known · observed · inferred · to validate – are how every buyer thesis is actually documented. The evidence standard →
Why the call is worth a buyer’s time.
Sold before – or tried to?
If a first process failed, we start by finding out where. What you are buying from us is the part you still can’t Google: where internal sponsorship sits inside each buyer, which functions hold approval or veto influence, what competing alternatives you are actually up against, and what evidence their decision case needs – plus a process that compresses when preparation and universe allow.
- What we ask to see from the first process.
The buyer list and who actually engaged, the information they received and when, every indication and what it was made of, and where the conversation stopped. The pattern tends to be visible within an afternoon.
- What changes in a relaunch.
The case, not the company: a valuation built on diligenced numbers, a buyer universe built on theses rather than logos, and information released in stages. Buyers who passed are re-approached with a reason to look again, not a reminder.
- Why it is re-entered quietly.
A process the market watched fail is a process buyers price. The relaunch is bilateral in appearance and competitive in fact. The evidence, as we put it to a board →
Capacity and continuity
Every mandate has a named lead and a named second inside the process from day one. We take a small number of mandates at a time, process operations are staffed before launch, and specialist diligence work – financial, tax, legal, technical – is done by the appropriate experts and coordinated into one timetable. Senior concentration does not mean single-person dependency.
One engagement. The whole transaction. Three founding partners on it.
The full sell-side mandate is the engagement everything on this page describes: we carry the process from the first call to the wire, and you keep running the company. Here is what that covers, what it does not, and what it costs in structure.
What it includes
The valuation we will defend across the table. The readiness review, run inside the mandate. The memorandum, the model and the data room. A documented case for every prioritised buyer before contact. The outreach, the management meetings and the buyer Q&A. Offer strategy, the negotiation of price and structure, the management of diligence, and the economics of the purchase agreement alongside your counsel – through to completion.
What it is not
Not a listing: we do not broadcast your company, and we do not run a process we do not believe can be won. Not a part-time engagement: the three founding partners are on every full mandate, and we take on a number of them we can carry properly. Not a substitute for your lawyer or your accountant – we lead the commercial transaction and work the issues with them.
How it is paid. A monthly retainer sized to the scope of the work, and a success fee on total enterprise value at closing. The retainer funds the preparation; the success fee is earned when the transaction is. You see every economic term before you sign.
Firm rule One side of every table. We act for sellers and we act for buyers; never for both in the same transaction.
Every serious target has two cases to win: the owner’s and the committee’s. Your buyer has a committee. We build the case it has to approve before we call.
Ready to start? The first movement is a conversation.
One call with a founding partner. All three work every full mandate and one of them leads yours; we tell you which, and why, before you engage us. We will tell you what the first eight weeks look like for your company, what it asks of you, and – if the honest answer is not yet – that.
One side of every table. One method for both.
We act for sellers and we act for buyers – never for both in the same transaction. Whether you are selling a company or buying one, the mechanics are the same: define what a win is before anyone names a price, build the case the other side’s committee has to approve, and keep the process in your control from the first call to the wire. This page is the map. Each door below is the full method.
Or start with the page that matches your situation.
The method, by door
The sell-side process
Four movements. The first is yours; we lead the other three. What happens week by week, what it asks of you, and the two numbers we count.
Selling – the full mandate →The buy-side process
From acquisition thesis to target universe to the owner conversation, and through valuation, diligence, structure and close – run by people who have sat on the seller’s side of it.
Buying – the full mandate →Confidentiality & safety
Staged disclosure, who learns what and when, and what happens in the first 24 hours if something leaks.
How the secret is kept →Fees & how we’re paid
A monthly retainer sized to the scope, a success fee on total enterprise value at closing, and the rule about whose side we are on.
The fee structure →The readiness review
Before a mandate: the six areas diligence tests, rated as a buyer’s committee will rate them, with the fix list yours to keep.
What it covers →The narrower mandates
An introduction mandate when you are selling; an origination mandate when you are buying (see Buy a company). Narrower scope, the same rule, the same people.
The introduction mandate →Three things that are true on every mandate.
The founding partners work it
Every full mandate is run by the three founding partners, named on the engagement letter. We decline the mandate if we cannot staff it that way.
Every number has a source
Our valuation, our buyer intelligence and every figure in a memorandum trace to a source with a stated evidence tier. The other side can check; so can you.
One side of the table
We act for sellers and we act for buyers – never for both in the same transaction. You want us on your side of the table before we are on the other side of it.
The same three people, whichever side of the table you are on.
The buyer’s case: thesis, negotiation, structure.
The numbers: valuation, financial preparation, the data room.
The process: execution, buyer coordination, the timetable.
Firm rule Named on the engagement letter; the people you meet on the first call are the people who run the mandate. The three, in full →
Tell us which side of the table you are on.
One call with a founding partner. You leave knowing which mandate fits, what it would ask of you, and what it would cost – in writing within 24 hours.