Where the market currently places the business, where it could credibly be placed, and what separates the two. The multiple lives here.
Aha Partners/Diagnostic
The instrument
The Value Creation Diagnostic.
Two businesses with the same financials can trade at very different multiples. We instrument the asset that sets the gap, so the exit, or the next round, prices what you actually built.
An exit is a single day's vote. So is a term sheet. Public investors can wait for the market to weigh a business properly. A fund selling on a date cannot. Nor can a founder raising on one.
The gap
The least instrumented line on the balance sheet
Goodwill is routinely the largest line in an acquisition and the least measured thing in the business. Brand already has a section in every investment memorandum. Pricing power, category position and buyer narrative set the multiple. Yet almost no value-creation plan instruments any of them.
The gap gets booked as a market outcome. It is closer to the accumulation of positioning decisions made deliberately, or not, through the hold.
The artefacts
Three artefacts, four weeks
Pricing power realised against peers, category language, share of search and mind, win-loss signals, and the narrative buyers actually repeat. Measured, not asserted.
The gap between current and target comparison set, sized as an enterprise-value range, with interventions prioritised and sequenced to your exit window. A defensible range, never a promise.
The process
How it runs
- 1Diagnose. Instrument the perception asset and name the constraints suppressing the multiple.
- 2Position. Move the business into a comparison set the market pays more for, in language buyers repeat.
- 3Roadmap. Sequence the interventions to the value window, run with your team, pointed at the outcome.
- 4Execute. Deliver with best-in-class partners, and hold the position through to the transaction.
The agreement
- Fixed fee, agreed before we start.
- The instrument is yours: every measure, every source, every assumption.
- Measurement first. We only propose intervention the numbers argue for.
- A value-creation workstream, not a marketing engagement.
Who runs it
Thinkers. Operators.
Most advisers see a business from one side. Aha sees it from every side that sets its price.
Ben Johnson works it as the brand strategist and operator, the one who builds and runs the repositioning. Frank Cotroneo reads it as the CFO, from inside the numbers. Ian Whittaker reads it as the market does, from outside, in the language of analysts and investors. Rory Sutherland reads the behaviour underneath, why perception moves the way it does.
The premise that joins them: a market understands a business psychologically before it understands it financially. Perception and the numbers are both real, and the work meshes them into a single position.
The financial case for the mechanism is set out by Benedict Johnson, with Rory Sutherland and Ian Whittaker, in Goodwill isn't a rounding error. Selected work is here. Each diagnostic is led by Ben on the brand side, and Frank on the finance side.
Timing
The windows where it earns most
The first hundred days, while the value-creation plan is being written and the vision and desired comp set are being drawn up. The run to exit, twelve to twenty-four months out, while perception and pricing are still undetermined. And for founders, the year before a raise, while the market is still deciding what you are.
Questions
Is this a marketing exercise?
No. It is the framing of an asset articulated as a comp set, investment memorandum and ultimately your goodwill line. Marketing, product or talent are potential levers as dictated by what the situation demands. The diagnostic and the prescription is agnostic.
What exactly do we receive?
A diagnosis, position and roadmap.
When is it most useful?
At entry, while the value-creation plan is being written; twelve to twenty-four months before exit, while the comparison set is still movable; or in the year before a raise, while the category is still yours to set.
Who is it for?
PE-backed and founder-led businesses, typically £20m to £300m enterprise value, and the investors who own them.
How long does it take and what does it cost?
Four weeks, fixed fee, agreed on a short scoping call before anything starts.
What happens afterwards?
With the diagnosis, position and roadmap set, the next stage is to embed and extend to realise the true value of the process. That is a series of actions whose purpose is to influence enterprise value.
Is your business undervalued?
If the market undervalues you,
change the conversation. We will tell you whether the gap is real, and the steps needed to close it.