Stage brief · Leverage · £7.5M to £10M

The question is no longer can you grow. It is what is this worth.

Serious people have started asking serious questions about this business. The honest answer to what it is worth depends on one thing above all: whether it runs without you. Not because you are leaving, but because that is what makes it valuable.

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What it sounds like

Founders at this stage say the same things.

“That senior hire cost us six figures and eighteen months.”

“Serious people have started asking serious questions about this business.”

“I want it to run without me. Not because I am leaving, but because that is what makes it valuable.”

The work at this stage

  • Second line leadership that holds. Roles designed around a machine that works, hiring briefs that reflect it, and the governance that stops a six figure hire becoming an eighteen month detour.
  • Governance and data that welcome scrutiny. Board packs, management information and controls at the standard an investor's analyst expects to find, before one is looking.
  • A company that provably runs for a month without you. The test that matters for valuation, run deliberately: decision rights, cadence and reporting that hold with you out of the building.
  • The diligence clock, started early. If a capital event is in view, the readiness work begins now: the model, the materials and the governance tested before anyone else tests them.
What is actually happening

The diagnosis, plainly.

From here every operating decision has an enterprise value consequence. Buyers and investors do not purchase your effort; they purchase systems, governance and a team that executes predictably. The same company, made independent of its founder, is worth materially more, and the discount for founder dependence is applied silently, in the price.

The senior hire that fails at this stage costs six figures directly and eighteen months indirectly, because the failure is usually structural: the role was designed around a gap in the machine rather than the machine being designed around the role. Second line leadership only holds when the operating system underneath it holds.

If a raise or a sale is inside the next eighteen months, this stage has its own clock. Diligence readiness is not something to start when the term sheet arrives; by then, every inconsistency in your numbers is a negotiating token in someone else's hand.

What changes when it is fixed

Second line leadership that holds. Governance and data that welcome scrutiny. A company that provably runs for a month without you.

Raising or selling inside eighteen months? Investor & Exit Readiness has its own clock: from £7,500 fixed.
Where it starts

Two weeks inside your real numbers. £2,500 fixed.

The Diagnostic ends with a written findings report ranked by what each finding is costing, and a decision. Around half the founders who take it need nothing further.

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Adjacent reading
Previous stage

Scale · £5M to £7.5M

When the operating machine is the constraint.

 Capital events

Investor & Exit Readiness

The model, materials and governance tested before a raise or sale. From £7,500.

 Start here

The Diagnostic

Two weeks inside your real numbers. £2,500 fixed.