Guides
How the numbers actually work: the reasoning, the mistakes, and the thresholds that move the answer. Free, and enough to do it yourself.
·2 min
Preparing your business for sale
A twelve-month sequence, in the order that actually compounds — what to fix first, what to leave alone, and which preparations buyers can tell were done last month.
·2 min
How profitability affects valuation
Margin does not just raise the earnings the multiple is applied to — it raises the multiple itself. Why the effect compounds, and what a five-point improvement is actually worth.
·2 min
How recurring revenue affects valuation
Why contracted revenue is worth two to three times what project revenue is worth, the four tiers buyers actually distinguish, and how to move revenue up a tier before you sell.
·2 min
What buyers look for
The order a buyer reads your business in, the four questions they are really answering, and what makes them walk away in the first hour.
·3 min
Common valuation mistakes
Nine errors that show up in almost every first valuation, what each one costs in euros, and the check that catches it before a buyer does.
·2 min
SDE vs EBITDA
Which earnings figure applies to your business, why the multiples attached to them are not interchangeable, and the €400,000 mistake owners make when they mix the two.
·6 min
Where your margin actually goes: the four steps between a sale and your profit
Your accounts list costs in the order a bookkeeper needs. Sorted by distance from the sale instead, they answer what a ledger cannot: which step drains the money, and who to talk to about it.
·2 min
Why your profit and loss does not add up
A subtotal that does not follow from the lines above it is almost never a rounding error. Four causes, and how to find which one in ten minutes.
·2 min
Revenue fell and your costs did not. How do you see it three quarters early?
In euros a fixed contract looks fine during a downturn. As a share of revenue it doubles. That difference is the earliest signal your accounts contain.
·2 min
You recover less freight than you pay. How much is that?
Most wholesalers recover only half of their outbound freight from customers. Two lines from your P&L tell you what that costs, and what to do about it.
·2 min
DCF valuation explained
Discounted cash flow without the spreadsheet mysticism — what the discount rate actually represents, why terminal value is usually most of the answer, and when a DCF is worth building.
·8 min
Gross margin lies: which of your products actually make money
The line that looks like your worst performer is often the one paying for the overhead. How allocation creates fake losses, and which number to use when you decide what to drop.
·10 min
What a 20% drop in revenue would actually do to you
Two businesses with almost identical profit. One loses two thirds of it when revenue falls a fifth, the other a third. The difference is one number from a single income statement.
·11 min
Profitable and broke: the gap between your P&L and your bank balance
Your accountant says you made sixty thousand. Your bank balance fell by sixty-seven. Both are correct. Here are the seven bridges between them, and which ones you can move.
·9 min
How much volume can you afford to lose after a price rise?
There is an exact answer and it takes one line of arithmetic. The same formula shows why discounting is far more dangerous than it looks.
·8 min
How long is your cash runway, really
Cash divided by monthly burn is the number most owners quote, and the first one to fail. What to calculate instead, and why the answer is a date rather than a duration.
·10 min
Your best customer might be your worst
Two customers, identical revenue, identical gross margin, and a fifteen thousand euro gap in what they leave behind. Cost to serve explains it, and it never appears in your accounts.
·6 min
Business valuation glossary: every term on this site, in one line
The jargon a buyer, a broker or a valuation report will use, defined in a sentence each, with a link to the longer answer where there is one.
·7 min
What working capital actually costs you in a sale
Advisory content treats the working capital adjustment as where sellers lose a fortune. Across more than a thousand deals the money at stake is about one percent, and the buyer's number usually wins.
·6 min
Where SME multiples actually come from
Every multiple you have read was published by someone selling something. Here is who collects the data, how, and why two datasets covering the same businesses disagree by a factor of two.
·6 min
Size moves your multiple more than anything you control
The best-supported finding in SME valuation is also the least useful advice: bigger businesses sell for more. Here is the evidence, and why the causal version of it is probably wrong.
·6 min
The private company discount, and the case against it
Being unlisted is supposed to cost you 20 to 30 percent of your value. The published estimates run from zero to fifty, and the best-identified ones cluster far below what practitioners apply.
·7 min
The number in the middle that nobody can source
Every risk that supposedly lowers your business value passes through one figure in the discount rate. The profession's own guidance says there is no data source for it.
·2 min
Revenue multiple explained
When turnover is a defensible basis for value, what the ranges actually are by business model, and the two situations where using one costs you money.
·5 min
Owner dependence: strong logic, no price data
The best evidence that owners matter comes from 13,000 Danish businesses and a natural experiment nobody designed. It says nothing about your sale price, and it is still the most useful thing here.
·5 min
Customer concentration: what the evidence actually says
One big customer is supposed to cost you a full turn on your multiple. That figure has no source. What the research does show is different, more specific and more useful.
·3 min
EBITDA multiple explained
What actually sets your multiple — size, growth, concentration and owner dependence — and why the sector average you found online is the least useful number in the calculation.
·3 min
How to value a business
The whole process in seven steps — from the earnings figure you start with to the range you end up defending. Written for owners doing this for the first time.
·2 min
Revenue multiple or EBITDA multiple?
One of these two methods will flatter your business and the other will not. Which one applies depends on facts about your company, not on which number you prefer.
·3 min
How EBITDA affects your valuation
Two companies with identical revenue can be worth three times different amounts. Almost all of that gap comes from what is inside EBITDA — and what should not be.