The $840,000 Nobody Modeled
The acquisition inquiry arrived on a Tuesday. Four sentences. An EBITDA multiple. A 30-day window. What the email did not mention is that the fund's model has already assigned a projection to your workforce, built from industry benchmarks, not from a conversation with anyone on your floor. The gap between what that model assumes and what your workforce actually knows has a documented median. It is $840,000. It was not in any vendor proposal across twelve deployments. It was not in any acquisition model on either side of any of those transactions. The seller who documents it first is having a different conversation.
The $28M Mistake
Victor stopped at the second paragraph. Thirty-eight months after his fund authorized a $28 million deployment, the Chief Restructuring Officer's letter described what had happened to every number the investment committee had approved. The Memphis deployment did not fail because anyone lied. It failed because vendor financial models are optimistic by structure — and the same six cost categories are understated in every proposal, in the same direction, every time. Here is what that structure looks like, what it cost, and what you can do before your next proposal arrives.