When boards call
- A mid-hold review: is the plan still the best use of the next three years?
- Exit preparation: which route and which timing give the owners most?
- A plan the board doubts, or a step in it that history does not support.
- A next round: what the company is worth to its shareholders after the financing it needs.
- An acquisition, a partnership or a separation on the table.
- A new chief executive who wants the options laid out on one page.
A review is not a commercial due diligence. It does not include customer interviews and carries no reliance letter for lenders or buyers. It is the work a board or an investor does to decide which of its options deserves that spend.
What the review measures
Venture-backed companies
What each option is worth to your shareholders, after the financing it needs.
- The financing each option needs, and what it does to runway, dilution and preferences.
- One price reading: the buyer's price at exit, each business on its own exit multiple and the group on the blend.
- The conditions each option rests on, and the alternative if one fails.
Owner-led and private-equity-backed companies
Your plan, tested against the alternatives, on the owners' return.
- Valuation on one price reading, with the evidence bounds and the assumptions above them.
- Funding and the lenders' tests at every date.
- Resilience in the joint adverse stress and deliverability within management's capacity.
Working with management
- Information is asked for in small batches, never as a data room.
- The executives see every figure by its source and can challenge any finding before it reaches the board.
- Where management and the review read a figure differently, both figures print on the page with the difference stated.