M&A Advisory
Know what you're buying before you sign
Financial diligence tells you what a business earned. We tell you whether it keeps earning after the owner walks out: the workflows, systems, data, and people that actually produce the numbers.
- Buy side
- Sell side
- Post-close
The numbers are the last thing to break.
A quality of earnings report checks the past. Most post-close surprises live in the operation: the one person who knows how billing works, a CRM nobody trusts, customer relationships that sit in the founder's inbox.
Our day job is building the systems small businesses run on. That is the lens we bring to a deal. We find where the operation is fragile, price what it takes to fix, and show where it can run better than it does today.
What diligence usually surfaces
- 01Revenue that rides on the founder’s personal relationships
- 02Critical processes that live in one person’s head
- 03Customer and pipeline data that does not reconcile with the books
- 04Software, accounts, and licenses tied to personal logins
- 05Manual workarounds hiding the real cost of labor
- 06Systems that will not survive integration with yours
Engagements
Four points in the deal
Engage us at one stage or run the whole arc with us, from the first screen to a fully integrated company.
- 01
Before the LOI
Acquisition Screening
Define the thesis, then let a governed pipeline read listings, CIMs, and financial packets against it. You review a short list with the reasoning attached, not a pile of PDFs.
- 02
Under LOI
Operational Diligence
We map how the target actually runs: workflows, systems, data quality, key-person risk, and what the automation opportunity is worth. It runs alongside your financial and legal diligence, not instead of it.
- 03
One to three years before a sale
Sell-Side Readiness
Make the business transferable before you take it to market. Documented processes, clean systems, and an operation that runs without you, which is what a buyer is actually paying for.
- 04
The first 100 days
Post-Close Integration
Consolidate systems, migrate data, and move one workflow at a time onto a single stack. Every step has a rollback, so the business keeps running while it changes hands.
Buyers pay for an operation that runs without its owner. We check whether it does.
Built for deal timelines
A typical buy-side diligence engagement runs three weeks, well inside a normal exclusivity window.
Days 1-2
Scope
Align on the thesis, the deal timeline, and what your other advisors already cover. No duplicated work.
Week 1
Data Room
Review documents, system exports, and financial packets. Build the first map of how the business runs.
Week 2
Walkthroughs
Interview the operators and walk the live systems with them. Where the documents and the real workflow differ, we note it.
Week 3
Findings
Deliver the documents below and walk your deal team through each finding.
What lands on your desk
Operational Diligence Report
Findings by workflow, with evidence. Key-person dependencies, system risks, and data gaps, each rated by severity.
Red Flag Memo
What could change price, terms, or your decision to close. Short and plainly worded.
Value Creation Map
The automation and AI opportunities inside the target, ranked by impact and effort.
100-Day Integration Plan
What moves first after close, what waits, and who owns each decision.
Start here
Have a deal in front of you?
Bring the timeline to a free discovery call. We will tell you what operational diligence can cover before your deadline, and what it cannot.
Who we work with
- Searchers and independent sponsors buying their first company
- Owner-operators planning an exit in the next one to three years
- Family offices and small funds adding platforms or add-ons
- Acquirers who just closed and need two companies running as one
What we are not
We are not a business broker, investment bank, or broker-dealer, and we do not take success fees.
We work alongside your banker, attorney, and CPA, and our fee does not depend on whether the deal closes. That keeps the findings honest.