Create Value (Value & Valuation)

The Diligence Paradox: From Partner to Interrogator Most mid-market deals do not collapse because the business is fundamentally flawed. They fail because during the high-stakes due diligence window, the buyer uncovers risks they hadn’t priced into the initial Letter of Intent (LOI). This is the Diligence Paradox: You have built a high-performing company, yet the moment an undocumented risk surfaces, the buyer’s psychology shifts instantly. They move from an enthusiastic "part

Founders are frequently seduced by the "revenue multiple." They scan industry reports, see a competitor sold for 6x, and assume their business is entitled to the same. In the reality of the M&A trenches, that number is a vanity metric until the buyer’s clinical assessment is complete. A sophisticated acquirer doesn’t start with a math problem; they start with a risk assessment. They aren’t asking how much revenue you have, but rather: "How confident am I that this performance

We have seen $100M deals collapse under the weight of a single customer contract, even as the founder was still in the weeds, obsessively tweaking the terminal growth rate in cell Z104 of their spreadsheet. Many entrepreneurs operate under a persistent "Founder’s Myth": that valuation is a mathematical certainty, a fixed number waiting to be discovered at the bottom of a perfectly crafted Discounted Cash Flow (DCF) model. In the air-conditioned vacuum of a spreadsheet, the lo