Pre-sale value creation for founder-owned companies
Improve first. Sell better.
Private equity buys businesses, improves them, and keeps the gain. Litefirm runs that playbook for you before you sell, so more of the gain is yours.
We look at your company the way a buyer will, find the few changes that would move your sale price the most for the least cost, and put experienced operators inside your business to make them. We're built to earn from the sale, not from selling you work.
For founder- and family-owned companies with about $10M to $75M in annual revenue, usually one to five years from a sale.
A buyer pays for what your business is today. Then it captures what it could be.
Buyers discount for every risk they see: the owner who still approves everything, numbers that take weeks to close, a sales pipeline that lives in one person's head. They price the upside at zero. After closing, they fix those things and keep the value.
After the sale
- You sell
- The buyer finds what to fix
- The buyer fixes it
- The buyer keeps the gain
Before the sale
- We find what a buyer would fix
- We fix it with you
- You sell a stronger business
- You keep more of the gain
The buyer's lens
We look at your company the way a buyer will.
Most improvement advice comes from people who have never sold a business. Ours comes from more than 100 deals. We know what buyers pay for, what they discount, and what they change in the first year.
We rank every change a buyer would make by what it adds to your sale price against what it costs, and we do the few at the top. Depending on the business, they tend to sit in operations and systems, technology and AI, finance and reporting, sales and marketing, or how much still depends on you.
If nothing is worth doing before you sell, we'll say so.
Operators, not advisors
Operators, not advisors.
We don't hand you a report and leave.
Experienced operators and specialists we know and trust go into your business, part-time or full-time depending on the work, and make the change stick. They work alongside your managers, and their pay is tied to measurable results.
Paid at the sale
Paid at the sale
Ashish Bhatt has spent more than 15 years selling owner-operated businesses and has worked on more than 100 deals. When you're ready, he can run the sale through his M&A practice at Synergy. Synergy, established in 2002, has sold 42 businesses in the past year, totaling over $250 million in deal value.
That is why our model is built around the eventual sale, not around selling you improvement work.
How it works
See how it works-
STEP 1
Assess
What the business may be worth today, what a buyer would question or change, and which changes would add the most for the least cost.
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STEP 2
Design
A short plan: what changes, in what order, who does it, and how we'll know it worked.
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STEP 3
Implement
Operators inside your business put the changes in place.
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STEP 4
Sell when ready
If you choose to sell through our firm, one success fee can potentially cover both the improvement work and the sale.
Who it's for
About $10M to $20M in revenue
The owner is often still central and the systems are lighter. The biggest gains usually come from basic systems, clean reporting and less dependence on the owner, with part-time help.
About $20M to $75M
A management team is usually in place. The gains tend to come from focused projects in operations, technology, finance or sales.
Growing, flat or declining
All can fit. What matters is the gap between how the business runs today and what a buyer would pay for.
Find out what a buyer would change in your business.
Request an assessment: what your business may be worth today, and the few changes worth making before a sale.
Request an assessment