The Founder's Due Diligence: What a Business Owner Researches Before Trusting an Advisor With Their Exit

A founder about to sell the business they built spends weeks researching the person who'll run that process, long before any advisor gets hired.

This is often the single biggest financial event of their life. They're not just checking credentials. They're trying to find someone who's actually handled a business like theirs before.

What the Research Actually Looks For

Not a firm's overall size or reputation in the abstract. Specific evidence: has this person handled a deal in my industry, at roughly my size, with the same kind of complications I'm worried about?

Most advisor bios answer none of that. They list credentials and years of experience, and leave the founder to guess whether any of it applies to their particular situation.

What Changes When the Research Finds an Answer

A founder who finds real, specific evidence walks into the first call already leaning toward trust. One who finds nothing walks in guarded, testing, and harder to close.

The advisor who wins that first meeting rarely won it in the meeting. They won it in the research the founder did the night before.