Is the business what the memorandum says?
Three seats at the same table
A buyer wants to know whether the story holds. A seller wants to know what the buyer will find. A broker needs both, on a deadline, for a business that is not theirs. All three are asking the same questions of the same company, and all three are usually answered from memory, a management presentation, and an afternoon of searching.
We answer them from primary sources, on a date, with a capture behind every claim, in days. The deliverable reads the same whichever seat you sit in, which is the point: it is the thing both sides of the table can check.
If you are buying
The memorandum was written to sell. It is not wrong, exactly, but it was built by people who chose the sources. Before you spend on legal and financial diligence, three questions cost far less to answer and change the price more.
Who actually competes with this business, and are they winning? Competitive Intelligence names the competitors from evidence, builds a dossier on each, and says whether the target's position is holding. Is the market doing what the memorandum says it is doing? Industry Outlook builds the picture from filings, pricing pages, hiring and trade sources, and labels every estimate as an estimate. What do customers and the machines say about the business today? Public Perception captures the review surfaces and the answer engines so you see what the business's own buyers see, before they become yours.
The target does not need to know it was examined. We build from public and subscribed sources, and the deliverable shows exactly what it leaned on.
If you are selling
Every one of those questions will be asked of you. A buyer's analyst will type your company's name into an answer engine before they open the data room, and what comes back is now diligence surface. If it is wrong, or stale, or a competitor's comparison page is setting your price, you want to know a year before they do, while there is still time to change what the machines are learning from.
Public Perception shows you that surface on a date. The Online Positioning Diagnostic traces each wrong answer to the page that taught it and sorts the fixes into what you can edit this week. Pricing Strategy tells you whether the number a buyer will anchor on is one you set or one you inherited. Done early, this is the cheapest multiple protection available.
If you are the broker
You are asked to vouch for a business you did not build, to a buyer who will check. A sourced competitive read and a market picture, attached to the memorandum, is the difference between a story and a case. It also shortens the question list, because the buyer's first twenty questions are already answered with captures they can click.
Brokers who work with us regularly brief us on several businesses a year. Tell us the pipeline and we will come back with terms.
Check the memorandum first
Before the Diligence package, there is the document itself. Deck Check at the Memorandum tier takes a confidential information memorandum or a management presentation of up to sixty pages and returns a claim ledger: every checkable claim, verified, contradicted or unverifiable, with the capture behind it, the financial and market narrative checked section by section, a one-screen verdict and the five questions to ask the seller. Five working days. Buyers run it before the letter of intent. Sellers and brokers run it before the memorandum goes out, because a contradicted claim found by the buyer costs more than one found by you.
The Diligence package
Three products that together answer the question every deal turns on: is this business what it says it is, in the market it says it is in, seen the way its buyers see it. Competitive Intelligence Core, Industry Outlook, and Public Perception Intelligence under one agreement, at the package discount, with a synthesis that puts the three findings on one page.
| Question the deal turns on | Intelligence | Delivered |
|---|---|---|
| Who competes, and is the position holding? | Competitive Intelligence Core | 7 to 10 days |
| Is the market what the memorandum says? | Industry Outlook | 5 to 6 days |
| What do customers and answer engines say today? | Public Perception Intelligence | 5 to 6 days |
| What will a buyer anchor the price on? | Pricing Strategy (add-on to the package) | 6 to 10 days |
Published prices apply to companies up to $100M in revenue. Larger targets are scoped in the first conversation.
Built to be checked by the other side
Every claim links to a dated capture: the page, the prompt, the date, the source, and a content hash so nothing can be quietly edited afterward. A reader on the other side of the table can click any sentence and land on the pixels. That is what makes it usable in a negotiation: nobody has to take anyone's word.
Every deliverable ships with Ask Rathvane, trained on that engagement only, so the buyer's associate and the seller's CFO can each ask it what matters without calling anyone. And every engagement carries the guarantee: if we do not provide you value, you do not pay us a dime.
Start before the letter of intent
The free snapshot is one page on what the answer engines say about any business, within the week. Run it on the target, or on yourself. Then tell us the deal and we will say which intelligence answers it.