Due diligence punishes disorganization.
Find it before the buyer does.
Every business has findings. The only question is who discovers them — you, on your own clock, or the other side of the table, with your valuation in their hands. We run the buyer's process before the buyer does, then stay to fix what it finds.
The problem
Due diligence is not a review. It's an exposure event.
From letter of intent to close is typically 60 to 90 days, and in that window a buyer's team goes through everything — financials, contracts, taxes, systems, your org chart, your dependence on two people. Whatever they find, they find on their clock, framed their way, priced their way. Findings become price reductions. Price reductions become retrading. Retrading becomes a blown timeline, and blown timelines kill deals — while you spend those months producing documents at night and running the company by day.
Here's the part nobody says out loud: the findings are rarely fatal. Messy revenue recognition, a customer at 40% of sales, contracts with change-of-control clauses no one has read, a business that can't run two weeks without the founder. Fixable — with time. What kills valuations isn't the problem. It's discovering the problem in front of the other party. By then, time is the one thing you don't have.
The red team exercise
So we run the buyer's process before the buyer exists.
For two to three weeks, we go through your business the way an acquirer's diligence team would — with fresh eyes, asking the questions a buyer will ask, while the answers are still yours to fix. Six areas, the ones deals actually die on:
- Operations under scrutiny — the processes and metrics a buyer reads as maturity, or as risk
- Financial narrative — can your numbers be traced to source and defended under questioning
- Contracts and obligations — change-of-control triggers, customer concentration, agreements that exist only as handshakes
- Team and knowledge concentration — what leaves the building if one person does
- Systems and data — whether you can produce what a data room demands, and how long it takes
- Entity and compliance surface — structure, licenses, and the exposures that need a specialist. Finding them is our job; when one needs deep tax or legal work, we bring the right specialist to the table
You get three things: findings ranked by valuation impact, an assessment of how close your records are to data-room ready, and a prioritized fix plan — what to fix first, what each fix involves, and which ones move your number.
The red team exercise runs two to three weeks, scoped to entity complexity. No transaction required — the best time to run it is before anyone is looking.
When there's a live deal
If you're already in a process — a buyer at the table, a raise underway — the exercise compresses and the job changes: we quarterback the response. Building and organizing the data room, coordinating your accountant and counsel so requests don't bounce between them, managing the request list so the deal clock doesn't slip — while you keep running the business the buyer is paying for. Same capability, different tempo. Deal clocks are unforgiving, so these engagements are scoped in days, not weeks.
Why us
A banker runs the process. An accountant validates the numbers. A lawyer papers the deal. All necessary — and none of them fix anything. When diligence surfaces an operational mess, each of them hands it back to you.
Fixing that mess is our core business. Group 18 redesigns how companies work — structure, roles, processes, systems, financial reporting. Due diligence findings are org design failures wearing transaction clothes: the undocumented process, the founder bottleneck, the system that can't produce a report. We've spent years fixing exactly these, which is why we can find them faster than someone reading your data room for the first time.
And when the findings list is long — it usually is — that's not a verdict, it's a work plan. The findings aren't the deliverable. Fixing them is — in priority order, with your team. Most firms in this space end at the findings. That's where we start.
How it works
No transaction
Red team exercise
From $20K Two to three weeks
Scales with entity complexity, quoted before we start. A short kickoff, then we work from documents and a handful of interviews — deliberately light on your team's time. You get the findings, the data room assessment, and the fix plan in a working session, not a PDF dropped in your inbox. Then, if you want the help, we execute the plan together.
Already in a transaction?
Live deal quarterbacking
Fixed fee
Scoped to the transaction
Scoped in the first conversation, mobilized within days. Data room build, request-list management, and advisor coordination — through close.
A fixed fee either way. During a deal, the last thing you need is an hourly meter.
Common questions
Is this confidential?
Completely. NDA before we see anything. No one learns you’re preparing — which is the entire point of preparing early.
We already have an accountant and a lawyer.
Good — keep them. We don’t replace either. We cover the operational ground they don’t, and when there’s a live deal we make their work faster by having answers organized before they ask.
How long does it take?
The red team exercise is two to three weeks. Live-deal support runs the length of the deal.
What does it cost?
The red team exercise starts at $20K and scales with entity complexity, quoted before we start. Live-deal quarterbacking is scoped to the transaction. Either way it’s a fixed fee — during a deal, the last thing you need is an hourly meter.
What if you find something serious?
Then you found it at the best possible moment — before it had an audience. Serious findings come with a triage plan: what must be fixed before you go to market, what can be disclosed with a plan attached, what a buyer will accept as-is. Finding it is the win. Then we get to work.
More of what we do
Custom software
You’ve outgrown spreadsheets and off-the-shelf tools. We build software your team will actually use, and you own all of it.
Read more →AI solutions
Seats aren’t adoption. A paid workflow audit, then the expensive work rebuilt with AI inside it.
Read more →Financial models
Stop deciding on last month’s P&L. Forward-looking models with scenarios you can test before you commit.
Read more →Find it on your own clock.
A 30-minute conversation about where your business is, what's not working, and whether we can help. If we can, we'll tell you exactly what we'd do first. If we can't, we'll say so.
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