Search the Caprae file.
Essays and knowledge from the desk. 88 entries, fully indexed.
This week.
Why we say no to eight of ten first calls.
Most deals fail diligence not because of math but because the seller was bored of us by week three.
A field guide to LOI mechanics.
The forty-eight hours after signing are when most deals quietly start dying. The checklist we actually use.
Search funds vs. ETA, the numbers.
What you do not see in the cohort reports: median time-to-close, sourcing costs, and what actually drove the top quartile in 2024-26.
What an MD actually looks for in a CIM.
Three signals we hunt for, four flags that end the read by page six, and the one number that decides whether we take the next call.
The case for fractional COOs in $5-20M roll-ups.
Why a 12-hour-a-week operator beats a full-time hire in the post-acquisition year. With three short case notes from our portfolio.
The next essay, in your inbox.
When the LOI deadline matters more than the price.
Three sellers this quarter. Same revenue band, same sector, same broker. Three opposite outcomes, and all of it decided in week one.
Seller A took the highest offer. We were second by 8%. Six weeks later, the deal collapsed. A different group walked in with a faster timeline and lower price; the seller had lost patience with the original bidder's diligence loop.
Seller B took our offer despite being 12% under the top number. We closed in 47 days. The seller cited one reason: the LOI had a hard deadline, and we hit it.
Seller C went with the second-highest. Negotiated for nine weeks. Eventually pulled the company off the market entirely.
The pattern: price gets you in the room. Conviction in the timeline gets you across the line. If your diligence operation cannot commit to a hard close, raise your price by 5%, because the calendar is the price you actually pay.
The Caprae knowledge base.
Every essay, post, and press mention, grouped into working clusters. Click a cluster to see the linked entries.