Approach
Senior judgment, scoped tightly.
The buyers and sellers who win in the middle market are the ones who do the work, and the work requires senior people doing it themselves. This is how we run an engagement.
Why we exist
Most diligence reports get skimmed.
That's a problem for the industry, and it's the reason we built this firm. The clients who win in the middle market are the ones who actually do the work, and the work requires senior people doing it themselves. Not a pyramid of associates assembling slides for a partner who flew in last Tuesday.
We work on commercial diligence, market analysis, and M&A advisory for middle market transactions. That focus matters. It's where the Big 4 won't go deep, where bulge-bracket bankers won't bother, and where the difference between a great deal and a bad one is buried in operational details no one looked at hard enough.
Our clients are private equity funds, search fund principals, family offices doing direct deals, operators acquiring competitors, and founders preparing to sell. Different mandates, same need: judgment they can trust, fast, on the questions that will matter eighteen months after the wire is sent.
We are independent. We do not take referral fees. We charge fixed fees. We sign things, we say no when the deal looks bad, and we tell you what we'd do if our own money were on the line.
How we work
Five principles. Strictly enforced.
Senior-led, end to end.
The person who answers the first call writes the final memo. No handoff to a junior team after the engagement letter is signed.
Fixed fee, scoped tightly.
Defined deliverable, defined timeline, no surprise invoices. Fees are committed at the engagement letter stage and never adjusted without a signed amendment.
No conflicts.
No referral fees from sellers or brokers. No success premium on diligence work. Our incentives sit on one side of the table per engagement, and the firm is structured to keep them there.
Short, dense work product.
A memo, not a binder. The questions that decide the deal, answered clearly. No forty-slide IC decks unless a sponsor's IC explicitly requires one.
Calibrated to the deal.
A sub-$25M acquisition does not need the same engagement shape as a $100M+ deal. Both should be matched to the size of the decision being made. We do that calibration in the scoping call, before the engagement letter.
Engagement shape
What an engagement looks like.
- 1.
Scoping call (1 hour). Define the deal, the decision, the timeline, the questions that matter most. Fifteen-minute call first; if useful, we extend it.
- 2.
Engagement letter and fixed fee. Single-page agreement. Fixed deliverable, fixed fee, fixed end date.
- 3.
Diligence work (3 to 6 weeks). Senior team on the work. Weekly check-in calls, no status decks.
- 4.
Memo and recommendation. Short written deliverable. The findings, the underwriting implications, a clear go/no-go recommendation.
- 5.
Optional post-close handoff. Two-week overlap with the buyer's operating team if useful for integration planning.
What we don't do
Two lines drawn on purpose.
We don't accept referral fees from sellers, brokers, or sponsors. Our incentives sit on one side of the table per engagement.
We don't write 200-page binders. We write short, dense memos addressed to the partner making the decision.
A scoping call is fifteen minutes.
If the engagement isn't right, we'll say so. Either way, you'll leave the call with a sharper read on what useful diligence looks like for this deal.