Here is the full run of a mandate conducted on the inverted process. Nothing heroic, and no miracle week. Each stage produces a precise deliverable. The machine carries the logistics; you carry the decisions. What changes is not how fast the steps are performed: it is their order. Everything verifiable is verified before the first offer. Nothing is left to discover afterwards, and that is where the months disappear. The weeks count from the day the data room is complete: the last document received is what starts the clock.
Before the clock starts
You gather what your firm already produces: tax returns, the accounting entries file, bank statements, VAT returns, social and tax certificates.
These documents form the reliability triangle. Three independent sources that cross-check: the accounts, the bank, the administration. One source can be argued with; all three together, far less. It is exactly what an auditor would rebuild later, at their expense and at the cost of your timeline.
The platform chases what is missing on its own, ticks what arrives and measures completeness continuously. You chase no one: you watch a list fill up.
From this stage, the anticipation view shows what an auditor will probe. A shareholder current account that moves a lot. A concentrated customer base. A provision unchanged for three years. You deal with these before they become questions, that is, while they still cost nothing.
The clock is not running yet. It starts with the last document received: that day the data room is complete and the twelve-week calendar sets itself. For a file whose accounts you already keep, this collection fits in an afternoon of uploads.
Week 0
The data room is complete: the clock starts, and the documentation comes out the same day.
The book of facts is built. Every statement in the file is tied to its source document, one click away. The buyer will not have to rebuild the file: they will have to audit it, which takes a fraction of the time.
What remains uncertain is not smoothed over. It enters the uncertainty register: named, weighed, and tied to the instrument that will handle it — earn-out, warranty, condition precedent, escrow. Showing a weakness seems counter-intuitive. It is nonetheless the only way to have it negotiated under competition, rather than suffered later in exclusivity.
The databook turns the entries file into a usable workbook: P&L, intermediate balances, monthly view, seasonality, EBITDA bridge. The figures stop being an assertion.
The anonymous teaser, the memorandum, the vendor due diligence report and the standard Q&A are drafted from these documents, in minutes, in your branding. You proofread, correct, approve. Nothing leaves without your action.
Week 1
The broad list of buyers to approach is built in one week: enriched public registers, the platform's base of funds and corporates, investment theses matched to the file.
You refine it, and your client decides name by name: they choose who will learn that their company is for sale. A competitor they do not want to see never enters the roadshow, and the trace of that refusal stays on file.
In parallel, the process letter sets the rules and the calendar dates — the same for every candidate, fixed before the first send.
Weeks 2–4
The teaser goes out to the selected counterparts, each with its own tracking: sent, viewed, interested. Reminders go out on their own at the set cadence; you only write to those who answer.
The confidentiality agreement goes to e-signature. As soon as it comes back signed, access opens by itself: the memorandum, the vendor report, the data pack, the answers to the standard questions. Everything is nominative, documents leave watermarked with their recipient's name, and every consultation leaves a trace.
Those who want to go further pay their entry fee. This toll sorts without you having to judge: whoever refuses to commit a few hundred euros on a multi-million transaction withdraws on their own, and does so early.
By week four, the serious candidates have declared themselves on a common grid, in broad strokes: envisaged price, structure, financing. They are the ones who enter the exchanges.
Weeks 4–8
The data room opens to the selected candidates. Questions arrive in one place; most already have their answer, written once for all. You handle what is genuinely specific to each candidate.
The acquisition audit no longer discovers: it confirms. The sampling plan is provided — the whole register, the declared facts, a materiality threshold — and each line receives a verdict. When a gap appears, it is declared: reasoned, dated, quantified. It becomes negotiation material, handled by the register's instruments. It does not become the pretext for a general renegotiation.
Management meetings and site visits take place in this window, for every candidate still in the running.
By week eight, the offer is filed on the same table as the declaration of interest — precise this time, line by line: price, price structure, financing, warranties, transition, answer to the register. The deadline is the calendar's, and filing closes at the due date. Three offers then become comparable term by term. The price is not computed. It reveals itself.
Weeks 8–12
Then comes negotiation, cell by cell. Each cell of the offer — price, earn-out, warranty, conditions precedent — has its own thread between the candidate and the seller. Each side prepares its position in a workshop the other cannot see. Nothing leaves without a send, and on the seller's side you are the one who sends. Competition runs until the contract: no exclusivity is imposed by the tool.
The retained offer is shaped into a term sheet: the chapter headings of an SPA, filled with what the table declares. An undeclared cell produces no line. The lawyer drafts the final deed on that basis: they reinvent neither the warranty nor the price structure, both flow from the register and the grid. Their time goes to the law, not to reconstruction.
What remains are the clocks nobody shortens: employee information, approvals, the release of acquisition financing. They have been running in parallel since the offer, because a traced file is precisely what a credit committee asks for.
Signing in week eleven, closing in week twelve. What used to be signed in months is signed in weeks. Not because people were rushed, but because nothing was discovered along the way.
The twelve weeks count from the complete data room, not from the signing of the mandate: the clock only starts with the last document received, and collection decides the start date. A file whose accounts the firm already keeps starts faster: the documents are in-house, so it does not request them — it uploads them.
Two honest caveats. Timelines also depend on the seller's availability: a week without an answer is a week lost, and no software can help. And outside clocks keep their own pace — an investment committee meets when it meets.
One real deal, and you judge on the evidence. Your firm pays nothing.