Podcast - Exit Prep for Due Diligence

Most founders lose valuation not because their business isn’t good, but because it isn’t buyable.

I recently joined Bruce Eckfeldt on his “From Angel to Exit” podcast to talk about what really happens inside private equity due diligence — and what founders need to fix before they think about an exit.

PE buyers don’t see your company the way you do. They deploy teams of specialists to dissect:

• Financials and hidden remediation costs
• Technical infrastructure and licensing exposure
• HR systems, culture, and leadership maturity
• Documentation, metrics, and how you actually run the business

A few themes we dug into:

• Valuation gets adjusted for remediation costs, not just growth risk.
• One red flag (culture, documentation, tech, HR) triggers broader scrutiny across the whole org.
• Mock due diligence years in advance is critical if you want to avoid a “good business, messy operations” discount.
• Documentation and clean, defensible metrics are credibility tools in PE processes.
• Macro forces (AI‑accelerated diligence, currency arbitrage, intergenerational wealth transfer) are changing how fast buyers move and how little risk they’ll   tolerate.

If you’re a $5–100M CEO planning to scale or exit in the next 3–5 years, this will give you a clear view of how PE actually evaluates risk — and where valuation adjustments really happen.

From Angel to Exit
 Podcast Summary

Full Podcast
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Contact us today if you’re thinking about exit readiness or mock diligence.