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.
Weeks 1–2
You gather what your firm already produces: tax returns, the accounting entries file, bank statements, VAT filings, tax and social security certificates.
These documents form the reliability triangle. Three independent sources that cross-check one another: the accounts, the bank, the administration. A single source can be argued with; the three together, far less. This is exactly what an auditor would otherwise rebuild later, at his cost and at the expense of your calendar.
The platform chases what is missing on its own, ticks off 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 financial years. You address these subjects before they become questions, that is, while they still cost nothing.
For a company whose accounts you already keep, these two weeks amount to an afternoon of uploading.
Weeks 3–4
The book of facts is built. Every statement in the file is tied to its source document, one click away. The acquirer will therefore not rebuild the file: he will audit it, which takes a fraction of the time.
What remains uncertain is not smoothed over. It enters the uncertainty register: named, weighted, and tied to the instrument that will handle it — deferred consideration, warranty, condition precedent, escrow. Displaying a weakness looks counter-intuitive. It is nonetheless the only way to have it negotiated under competition, instead of suffering it later in exclusivity.
The databook turns the accounting entries file into a workable spreadsheet: income statement, intermediate balances, monthly breakdown, seasonality, operating margin bridge. The figures stop being a claim.
The anonymous profile and the memorandum are drafted from these documents, in minutes, in your brand. You review, you correct, you approve. Nothing goes out without your action.
In parallel, the acquirer list is built: enriched public registries, the platform's base of funds and industrial buyers, investment theses matched against the file.
Weeks 5–8
The confidentiality agreement goes out for electronic signature. As soon as it comes back signed, access to the data room opens by itself. It is named, documents are watermarked for their recipient, and every consultation leaves a trace.
Questions arrive in one place. Most already have their answer: the standard question set was written before launch, once, for everyone. You no longer answer the same thing twenty times. You handle what is genuinely specific to each candidate.
Those who want to go further take their entry fee. This toll sorts without you having to judge: whoever will not commit a few hundred euros to a multi-million transaction withdraws by himself, and does so early.
Offers are submitted on a common grid. It is not a free-prose letter of intent; it is a letter to complete: price, price structure, financing, warranties, exclusivity, a line-by-line answer to the register. The submission date is the one on the process calendar, and the window closes on the deadline.
Three offers then become comparable term by term. The price is not calculated. It is revealed.
Weeks 9–10
The acquisition audit no longer discovers: it confirms. The sampling plan is supplied — the whole register, the declared facts, a materiality threshold — and every line receives a verdict.
When a gap appears, it is declared: reasoned, dated, quantified. It becomes negotiating matter, handled through the register's instruments. It does not become the pretext for a general renegotiation. That is the whole difference between adjusting a point and reopening an agreement.
Then come the negotiation tables. For each candidate, two agents negotiate from the deposited facts alone: the offer, the answers to the register, the declared gaps. No one hands them a secret limit or an ulterior motive. They bring out a balance point.
Your client then holds one balance point per candidate, and they compare with one another. He chooses the one that suits him. The final approval is human, on both sides, and it alone is binding.
Weeks 11–12
The agreement approved on both sides is transcribed into a draft deed. Word for word, with its integrity fingerprint: what was approved is what is written, and that can be checked.
The lawyer drafts the final deed on that basis. He reinvents neither the warranty package nor the price structure: both follow from the register and the grid. His time goes to the law, not to reconstruction.
What remains are the clocks no one shortens: informing the employees, the 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 needs to start.
What used to be signed in months is signed in weeks. Not because anyone was rushed, but because nothing was discovered along the way.
Twelve weeks assume a file that is ready, and the first two weeks serve exactly that purpose. 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.