"Revenue is up, and nobody can tell me whether that is the market, our pricing, or one large customer about to renegotiate."
On a deal, the two or three questions whose answers would change what you pay or whether you proceed. Inside a business, the question the board has started asking. Everything after this is in service of those. That is what keeps it from becoming a generic market study.
Then the number comes apart: volume against price, mix shift, new logos against retained revenue, and where churn is being absorbed rather than shown. This usually needs billing or transaction data rather than the management pack, because the management pack is generally what created the ambiguity.
Size the market properly rather than accepting the seller's framing, then work out where value accrues along the chain and who holds pricing power. In payments that means the economics of the parties either side as well as the business itself.
Then the pressure test: what breaks first at two or three times scale, which customers carry disproportionate margin, what renewal exposure actually looks like, and which cost lines move with volume rather than staying comfortably fixed. This is where most of the uncomfortable findings surface.
Written to be read by a board or an investment committee rather than presented at one, with the working shown so the method can be interrogated rather than taken on trust. Then a session to walk through it, including the parts that are contested.
On deals I stay available through IC. Findings that arrive and then vanish are not much use when someone asks a hard question in the room.
The deliverable is the analysis and the model, not a presentation of them. Fifteen to twenty pages, written in prose, with the working shown so anyone can disagree with the method rather than just the conclusion.
The model stays with you. It is built to be re-run next quarter without me, because a read that only works once is not much use.
This is a commercial read, not financial or legal diligence. It runs either way round: on your own business ahead of a raise, a budget cycle or a board asking harder questions, or on a target, where it supports a deal team rather than standing in for a full due diligence process. Multiple commercial due diligence mandates led at Edgar, Dunn & Company, under deal timelines and the scrutiny that comes with them, plus expert witness support on interchange and platform economics disputes.
Fixed price, not a day rate. The scope is agreed up front and the price does not move with it. If the work takes longer than expected, that is my problem rather than yours, which is the right way round.
Quoted after a short call, once I understand what you are actually dealing with. Invoiced half on start and half on delivery.
Most engagements end at delivery. Some clients keep me on a light retainer afterwards to keep the model current and to be available when the board asks something new. That is agreed at the end, not the start.
Where AI does part of the work, I say which part. Some of the analysis and model building uses AI tooling. The judgement, the method and the conclusions are mine, and I will tell you which is which if you ask.
It rarely fits exactly, and that is normal. Worth a conversation rather than a form.
martin@scalepointpartners.com