Sale prep for owner-led businesses

Twelve to twenty-four months from listing. $500K to $5M EBITDA. Ten weeks of structured work, a complete data room at the end.

See the engagement
Tendara · est. 2026 · San Francisco Scroll

The arithmetic of preparation

Industry data, 2026
0%
of attempted business sales fail to close.
Exit Planning Institute
$2–4M
typical valuation upside on a $2M EBITDA business once owner-dependency is removed.
Breakwater M&A · Lion Advisors
0 wks
from kickoff to a complete sale-ready package, signed off and dropped into the data room.
Tendara engagement
  1. 01

    Origin

    Founding decisions. Why things are done the way they are. The tribal knowledge that never made it into a doc.

  2. 02

    Customers

    Top twenty accounts. Who buys what, why, renewal patterns, and what could go wrong with each.

  3. 03

    Vendors

    Suppliers and partners. Critical-path dependencies. The vendors the business cannot replace overnight.

  4. 04

    Pricing

    How prices are set. Where there is flex. The discounts that exist and why.

  5. 05

    People

    Who is critical. Who is replaceable. What makes someone good in this company.

  6. 06

    Day in the life

    Every recurring decision the owner makes in a week. The cadence the buyer is taking on.

  7. 07

    Problem-solving

    Unusual situations the business has handled. What worked. What the owner would do differently.

  8. 08

    Financial narrative

    How money flows. Seasonal patterns. The story behind each line of the P&L.

  9. 09

    Risk register

    What keeps the owner up at night. The top ten enterprise risks and how each is mitigated.

  10. 10

    Synthesis

    Walk through the draft data room together. The owner corrects what's wrong. The bundle ships.

The work

Three engagements
01 Discovery sprint, Value Gap memo Two weeks
02 Full engagement, complete bundle Ten weeks
03 Maintenance retainer, kept current to listing Monthly
The deliverable

What lands in the data room

A single bundle. One hundred and fifty to three hundred pages. Drops straight into the buyer's data room and answers every "can it run without you" question before it's asked.

  1. iOperations ManualSOPs
  2. iiCustomer Concentration MapTop 20
  3. iiiVendor & Supplier MapCritical path
  4. ivPricing PlaybookLogic + flex
  5. vOrg Chart & Role DependenciesDelegation
  6. viFinancial NarrativeThree-year
  7. viiRisk RegisterTop 10
  8. viiiDay in the LifeCadence
  9. ix90-Day Transition PlaybookHandover

Ready when you are