The value ladder
Start where you are. Each step de-risks the next.
Four ways of working, sequenced so that neither of us ever commits on a guess. Most founders should start with the free assessment. Some should stop there for a year and fix things. That is the ladder working as designed.
Fifteen questions across the five domains of the method. You get a score, an R/A/G read per domain, and your top three gaps, each priced in multiple terms: this gap costs you roughly 0.8 turns, and here is why.
No call, no pitch on the results page. The report lands by email with one short reading list matched to your biggest gap.
RUNG 02 · THE NEAR-TERM PRODUCT
Exit-Readiness Audit
Fixed fee, quoted before we start · ~2 weeks
The full teardown from the method, run on your real data instead of public filings. Same examination the teardowns demonstrate, same scorecard, and the same one a buyer will eventually run whether or not you commission this one. You get there first.
- Buyer-Confidence scorecard: the five domain scores, the overall Exit-Readiness Score, R/A/G
- Market timing and positioning read: where your sector trades, who is buying now, when to run a process
- Risk register: every value-down flag, rated by severity and by likely price and structure impact
- Value-creation roadmap: fixes sequenced by return on value drivers, deal-killers first
- Indicative impact: a directional view of what closing the top gaps does to your multiple and structure
Two weeks from data room to roadmap. The audit is complete on its own: most clients take the roadmap and execute it themselves.
RUNG 03
Scale-to-Exit Advisory
Retainer · 12 to 24 months
Capacity: a handful of clients at a time
For owners executing the roadmap who want the examiner in the room while they do it. Deal-killers first, then the value drivers, with the scorecard re-run at each milestone so progress is measured in buyer confidence, not activity.
Only offered after an audit. The audit exists so neither of us commits to a two-year engagement on a guess.
RUNG 04
Sell-Side Mandate
Success fee
When the business is ready and the window is right: running the process to a cross-border buyer pool, from positioning and buyer outreach through diligence to close. The preparation work above is what makes this stage fast instead of forensic.
Taken selectively, and only where the scorecard says the business will clear diligence. Declining a premature mandate is part of the service.
The whole ladder runs under a published code of ethics.
Why a ladder
Every rung de-risks the next, in both directions.
You never buy the big engagement to find out if the small one was worth it. The assessment tells you whether the audit is worth two weeks. The audit tells you whether advisory is worth two years. Advisory tells both of us whether a mandate will survive diligence.
The most expensive advisor is the one hired at the LOI, two years too late, to defend numbers that needed two years to fix.
Rung one is free and takes three minutes.
Your score, your top three gaps, and what each one costs you in multiple terms. Start there. Everything else follows from what it finds.