No. 01 — Practice
Diligo runs a narrow book by design. These are the only four engagements the firm signs, and the boundaries between them are the reason a founder gets a straight answer in the first meeting.
No. 02 — The book
01 — Sell-side
Six weeks of preparation before a single name is approached, a shortlist of twenty rather than two hundred, and management sessions the partner sits in. Typical mandate: nine to twelve months, enterprise value $50M to $600M.
02 — Buy-side
The thesis is written before the outreach starts, and the outreach is proprietary — owners who were never going to answer a banker's mailer. Typical mandate: two to four closings over eighteen months.
03 — Special situations
Covenant pressure, a shareholder who wants out, a carve-out nobody has priced. The work is quiet, the calendar is weeks rather than quarters, and the outcome is frequently that the business never goes to market at all.
04 — Capital advisory
Minority sales, shareholder liquidity and growth debt for owners who want the next decade without the exit. Typical mandate: four to seven months, and roughly a third of them end in no transaction at all.
No. 03 — The process
The same rail runs under every mandate in the book. What changes is how long stage three takes.
The first conversation
Ninety minutes with a partner and no engagement letter. Two in five end here, with a recommendation to wait.
Preparation
Six weeks inside the numbers — a model the buyer's diligence will not dismantle, and the story the founder is prepared to defend.
The approach
Twenty names, contacted by a partner under our own name. No teaser blast, no data-room until an NDA and a number are on the table.
Negotiation
Management sessions, confirmatory diligence and one price conversation the partner holds personally.
Close and hand over
Documents, escrow, funds flow, and ninety days of integration support the founder did not budget for.
No. 04 — Coverage
We take mandates outside these sectors only when a partner has closed in them before. There is no research desk to hide behind.
No. 05 — Engagement
A modest monthly retainer that is fully credited against completion, and a success fee on the closed value. The retainer exists so we can afford to tell you not to transact — it is roughly a tenth of what the engagement is worth to us.
A partner and one associate. The partner who takes your first call is the one in every management session and on the other side of the price conversation. There is no coverage rota and no handover.
Enterprise values between roughly $30M and $600M. Below that the fee cannot support the attention model; above it a founder is usually better served by a bank with a syndication desk, and we will say so.
Nine to twelve months from engagement to funds flow for a prepared business. Six weeks of that is preparation before any buyer hears the name — the stage most processes skip and most processes then lose value in.
Not from us. Approaches go out under Diligo's name, the shortlist is twenty rather than two hundred, and nothing enters a data-room before an NDA and an indicative number. We publish no tombstone without written consent.
No. 06 — Next step
Ninety minutes with a partner, no engagement letter, and a straight answer about whether this is the year.