What sellers and investors ask us first.

Entrepreneurs and shareholders selling or buying a technology business, and private equity funds building value in a portfolio and preparing an exit.

Deal sizes sit in the mid-market, with an average target around €30m in revenue. Roughly 70% of transactions run across borders.

The Managing Partner, from the first conversation through to close. Whoever runs the pitch is in the data room and at the negotiating table.

That is why we run few mandates at a time. Senior attention does not stretch across ten processes.

A call of about thirty minutes. You describe the situation, and we tell you what looks realistic, which buyer groups fit and what the market is paying right now.

It costs nothing and commits you to nothing. Afterwards you decide whether working together makes sense.

Yes. Enquiries stay confidential whether or not they turn into a mandate, and we sign a non-disclosure agreement before anything of substance is shared with a third party.

Once a process starts we keep it anonymized: interested parties see a short profile without the company name, and they get the detail only after an NDA is signed and you approve it.

Usually a monthly retainer alongside a success fee at closing. The retainer covers the ongoing work, the fee follows the outcome and scales with deal size and complexity.

Value creation mandates work differently: a fixed scope for the diagnostic, then support across the hold period. We set out the terms in the first conversation, before anything is billed.

Yes. Buy-side mandates cover target search from our own screening, approach, valuation, negotiation and support through to close.

For buyers running a buy-and-build strategy we maintain a standing add-on pipeline rather than searching for one target at a time.

Six to twelve months from mandate to close is typical in the mid-market. Preparation and documents take six to ten weeks, the approach and indicative offers another eight to twelve, due diligence and negotiation the rest.

Cross-border processes and carve-outs sit at the upper end, because approvals, languages and time zones all run alongside.

The market pays for growth, recurring revenue and an organization that runs without its owner. The best moment is when all three are true, and you can work toward that.

Twelve to eighteen months of lead time is usually enough to close the gaps that otherwise cost money in due diligence. The earlier you start, the stronger your side of the table.

Three groups: strategic buyers from the same or an adjacent sector, private equity funds running a platform strategy, and PE-backed platforms acquiring add-ons.

They pay differently because they value differently. A strategic buyer pays for synergies, a fund for earnings and the next exit. The process has to serve both arguments at once.

It depends on the goal. A broad process reaches sixty to over a hundred parties and pushes the competitive tension as high as it goes; a narrow one approaches ten to twenty carefully chosen names and protects confidentiality.

The longlist comes out of our screening, which covers around 1,480 targets a quarter. From that universe comes a shortlist matched on strategy, size and buying power.

As a rule, when you decide they should. Until signing the process runs through a small circle, usually the shareholders, the management and the finance lead.

For the communication after signing we prepare with you who hears what, and when. An orderly announcement beats a rumor every time.

An earn-out is a slice of the price tied to future performance. Buyers use it where they cannot yet follow a plan, sellers accept it where it lifts the total.

The detail decides: the measure, the period, your influence on the operating business, and what happens if the buyer restructures the organization. That is where the disputes come from later, and where we negotiate longest.

In the mid-market, on multiples: a multiple of adjusted EBITDA gives the enterprise value, and net debt comes off it to give the price for the shares.

Our valuation calculator shows the current ranges by sector and size class. Where growth, recurring revenue and customer structure are strong the value sits above the band, and below it where they are not.

Earnings as a buyer can expect them after the handover. One-off effects, private items, a market-rate managing director salary and special effects come out of the reported figure.

Every adjustment has to be documented. What falls in due diligence costs a multiple of itself, because it is multiplied by the multiple.

Recurring revenue, growth, gross margin, low customer concentration and a management team that runs the business without the shareholder. For software companies, net revenue retention and product architecture come on top.

All of it can be moved in twelve to twenty-four months. That is the work before the process, and it shows up in the multiple.

Value is a calculation; price is the result of a negotiation. Between the two sit the competitive tension in the process, the strategic fit of the buyer, and how well the numbers survive scrutiny.

Price is therefore made in the process design, which makes the choice of buyers the single most important decision.

As a rough guide, yes. As a negotiating position, no. A calculator knows your sector and your size class, and nothing about your customer structure, your contracts or your dependencies.

Use it to sanity-check the order of magnitude. Anything beyond that needs a look at the numbers.

Operational value building between entry and exit, run with the management of the portfolio company. We find the levers, rank them by effect and time, and stay through the execution on a monthly KPI cadence.

The most frequent levers are pricing, go-to-market, product economics, reporting, AI enablement, add-on M&A and the equity story.

Twelve months before the planned process. That leaves time to close the gaps a buyer would otherwise find, and to build the equity story out of evidence rather than intent.

Four weeks before the data room opens, what is left is documenting the status quo cleanly.

In four steps: a diagnostic over four to six weeks, a value creation plan over another four, then execution support on a monthly KPI cadence with quarterly reviews with the fund, and transaction readiness twelve months before the exit.

The diagnostic scope is fixed, so what lands on the table at the end is clear from the start.

We run the exit afterwards ourselves. Every recommendation is measured against whether a buyer later pays for it, and a pure advisory mandate never gets that feedback.

On top of that: small senior teams, and our own screening data from around fifty valuations a quarter.