We maximize enterprise value for an exit in a post-AI world.
How It Works
One assessment, followed by work scoped from what it finds.
Start the AssessmentThe Transfer Value Assessment answers two questions: can the value move to a new owner, and will the business keep delivering after the sale? VGS and Day Two examine each question separately, alongside the dollar value at risk.
Valuation-Grade Succession
Can the value transfer?
If the owner steps away, can others keep the customer accounts, decisions, essential work and AI workflows running? VGS examines the evidence and shows where value still depends on particular people.
Continuity after the sale
Will the value hold?
Once the business changes hands, is it delivering what the buyer expected? Day Two examines how the business is running after the sale to show what is holding, where disruption could reduce value, and what needs attention.
How VGS and Day Two work together →
One Assessment intake. Two separate scores, reported beneath the dollar result. Findings guide Plan and Runway, and Day Two measures help the buyer verify that value is holding.
Ten business days. One intake from the CFO and HR. The evidence assessment, Stephen’s validation, a Proof Pack and one readout conversation. $7,500, credits toward Plan and Runway within 90 days of Proof Pack delivery.
The fixes, sequenced around the exposure and the time available before exit. Owner coverage, carve-out readiness, AI evidence and the Day Two plan sit here. Reassessment shows what changed using the same method. Scope, timing and price follow the assessment.
A share of Transfer Value created, taken at close, with a retainer. The engagement defines how verified changes are measured and the resulting fee.
Each CIM claim is examined against evidence: documented, unknown or asserted without support. Real versus imaginary EBITDA, process and AI. The buyer’s going to find it either way. Find it first and it’s multiple defense. Let them find it and it’s a price chip.
The Absence Test asks what happens if the person holding the value is absent. It examines revenue that follows a person, processes only one person can run, and unsupported CIM claims. Evidence determines the coverage state. Missing information carries the specified discount default.
EBITDA at risk is multiplied by the exit multiple. Expected one-time replacement costs are added once. Each slice of EBITDA is allocated once and reviewed for overlap.
Harbor Industrial Supply · Illustrative
Harbor is a fictional regional industrial distributor. With the owner absent for three weeks, fulfillment, shipping and receivables held. Pricing exceptions, key-account escalations and vendor renegotiations did not. Its CIM describes AI in quoting and inventory planning. A senior analyst built the quoting model with no documented process, backup or retention agreement. Inventory planning is a spreadsheet macro the owner adjusts every Sunday night.
The evidence review asks how much of the AI claim is supported, whether it is banked, whether one person holds it, whether it conveys with the company, and whether its net contribution is positive. A tool’s presence does not establish that its value transfers.
The first ninety days matter: the people who can run the quoting model have options after close. Without documented ownership and operating coverage, the buyer inherits the cost and delay of rebuilding it.
Unknown gets discounted. The example includes two unknown items. They remain in the assessment at their bucket defaults.
EBITDA at risk a year, as found: $1.7M. 40% of Adjusted EBITDA. Range $1.3M to $2.1M. At target: $360K a year.
At the 6.0x deal multiple, as found: $10.2M. Range $7.7M to $12.5M. At target: $2.1M. The most a buyer could argue for, since some of this risk may already be in the price.
| Measure | As found | Target state |
|---|---|---|
| Revenue that follows a person | $700,000 | $175,000 |
| Process only one person can run | $445,000 | $60,000 |
| Unsupported CIM claims | $540,000 | $120,000 |
| EBITDA at risk a year | $1.7M | $360K |
| Exit multiple | 6.0× | 6.0× |
| Expected replacement costs, one time | $116,000 | $15,000 |
| Transfer Value at risk, at the deal multiple | $10.2M | $2.1M |
| Share of $25.2M enterprise value | 41% | 9% |
| VGS Index | 70 | 93 |
| Day Two Index | 87 | 98 |
How to read this: Lower dollars at risk mean less exposure. VGS and Day Two are separate scores out of 100; each is the share of Adjusted EBITDA that holds up on that question. They are not added together or presented as a single score.
The gap between as found and target is about $8.1M at the deal multiple (range $6.1M to $9.8M). It is a modeled target, not a result. Ranges run every percentage one quarter lower and one quarter higher, capped at 100%.
See the line items behind this numberI’ve sat in all three chairs on a deal.
The seller’s chair, taking a company into private equity. The buyer’s chair, across a mix of industries including robotics and AI. And the chair most advisors have never sat in: the one that stays after close to make it work, in the plants and the field rather than from headquarters.
The third chair is where GrowFast comes from.
Call it the Robot Grocer. A grocery business built automated warehouses, and I came in after it had bought two robotics companies for north of a quarter billion dollars. The deals were done. The value was real. It just sat with a handful of people who could make the robots deliver in a live building, and nothing about the operating model was built to hold that value once the deal closed.
So we rebuilt it. Production managers gave way to engineers. A single leader was put over the site with authority across the floor. Jobs were rewritten and repriced around how the work actually ran. It was the right fix. The problem was the timing. All of it happened after close, on the buyer’s clock and the buyer’s money, and every month it took was value leaking out of a deal that had already been priced.
That’s the moment GrowFast was built to move. Everything we found in month six after close was findable a year before the book went out, and fixable for a fraction of what it cost afterward.
The exit isn’t the finish line. The handoff is.
We don’t replace QoE, legal or commercial diligence. We don’t run interviews across the company. We are not HR. We don’t hand you a report and leave.
Stephen and the Ecosystem of nine specialist advisors apply their expertise to the transferability problem, with the work chosen from the assessment findings.
Meet Stephen and the advisors