Frameworks
The instruments.
Eight canonical frameworks run through every part of the curriculum. Two have their own pages; the rest are taught where they are used.
- 01
The 12 Red Flags
The canonical library of what kills deals, with a decision rule for each.
Taught inL6.2.1Concentration, litigation, regulatory exposure, owner dependency, working-capital manipulation, lease and cost cliffs, key-employee risk, deferred capex, revenue and margin erosion, related-party dealings, aggressive add-backs, and channel dependency. Each flag carries what it looks like in the financials, the exact question to ask the seller, and a rule: critical flags end the deal if verified, moderate flags are negotiated or walked, low flags are priced in.
- 02
The Walk-Away Doctrine
Four gates where the deal is checked, and standing rules that outvote the tired version of you.
The screen at minute fifteen, the buyer's checklist before the LOI, the scrubbed earnings before the price, and the walk-away price before the negotiation. Walking away is the most valuable skill in acquisitions and the one that fails first, because it fails quietly.
- 03
The Seven-Link Failure Chain
How a healthy company becomes a bankruptcy, one link at a time.
Taught inL2.5.1A tired buyer says yes; the diligence gap; the paper hands power to the wrong side; hidden concentration; no cash cushion; the crack; the spiral. Break one early link and the crack hits a company that can take the punch. The chain is the thing to memorize, not the stories.
- 04
Buy-box fit, trajectory and customer concentration are the kill switches; owner role, add-back smell and asking-price sanity follow. The verdict is pursue, investigate, or pass. Fifteen minutes with a CIM is a decision, not a reading assignment.
- 05
Every add-back is sorted by how defensible it is, the owner's compensation is replaced rather than removed, and the multiplier warning is applied: at four times earnings, every dollar of add-back you accept adds four dollars to the price.
- 06
The Sourcing Taxonomy
Three layers that do not collide: where deals live, the process loop, the data stack.
The three sourcing layers describe where deals are; find, enrich and reach is the loop the searcher runs; the five-layer enrichment waterfall is the data stack that fills in an owner before any paid tool is touched. Sourcing is sales, and most businesses that change hands were never listed.
- 07
The Five Seats
Source, enrich, screen, analyze, reach: the one-person deal team.
A searcher runs four jobs alone. The five seats are the roles a model fills so one person can run a funded-search workflow, taught as conversation rather than configuration, with files as the source of truth and the search brief as permanent memory.
- 08
The Buyer's Checklist
Five red lines, eight verify-before-trust checks, ten questions, four walk-away rules.
Never sign a confession of judgment. Never let seller-loyal people control payroll. Know every power the preferred holds. List every guarantee and its reach. Never buy on the seller's clock. Run it twice: before the LOI and the week before close.
Tools
Run them on a deal.
The screener scores a deal against the twelve flags; the stress-tester solves for the walk-away price; the generator writes the letter.