You’re thinking about legacy
Later in your career, thinking hard about your employees, your clients and what the next twenty years look like. You want it left in good hands, and that matters as much as the number.
Sell-side advisory for founder-owners
Deciding whether to sell? We’ve sat in your chair.
Tempest advises founder-owners of $1M–$10M EBITDA service and expertise-driven businesses — led by someone who built a company, ran it, and sold it.
Before you’re sure
Most people who call us aren’t certain they want to sell.
That’s the normal starting point, not a problem. You’ve been turning it over for a while, you’re not sure the feeling is legitimate, and the people closest to you don’t quite understand what you’re weighing. We do — and there’s no cost to talking it through before you’ve decided anything.
You’re simply done
Age has nothing to do with it. You’ve carried this for long enough and you want out. That’s a legitimate reason to sell — not a failure, and not something you need to justify to us.
The decision found you
Health, a partnership that stopped working, family circumstance. Something moved the timeline for you and now you’re making a decision you hadn’t planned to make yet.
Why it’s different here
Your first exit. Not ours.
Most founders sell once. The buyers across the table do this every quarter — they know where the leverage sits, which questions land, and how a good business gets talked down in diligence. We even the table, because we’ve sat on your side of it.
Read the founder’s story
What you get
Three things, and they only work together.
Lived experience
Our founder built a company and sold it. Not a case study — the actual decision, the actual diligence, the actual morning after. It changes what we notice and what we tell you.
Technical rigor
Deep strength in modeling, numbers and structure. Your exit strategy is built for your business and your goals, not pulled off a shelf and relabelled.
Modern execution
The process brought up to date — clearer to follow, easier to navigate, and built to put your company in front of the right buyer rather than every buyer.
Empathy without rigor is just sympathy. Rigor without empathy is exactly what makes founders wary of advisors in the first place. The combination is the whole point.
How we work
How a sale actually goes
Four stages. The first one is a conversation, and it’s the one most advisors skip.
Step 01
Decide if it’s time
A conversation, not a pitch. Sometimes the answer is “not yet” — we’ll tell you, and we’ll tell you what to work on in the meantime.
Step 02
Understand what you have
The numbers, cleanly. What the business is genuinely worth today, where the value actually sits, and what a buyer will push on.
Step 03
Go to the right buyers
Positioning the company in its best light, then running a real process to the buyers who should want it — not a blast to everyone with a mailbox.
Step 04
Get you to the close
Negotiation, diligence, and the long stretch in the middle where deals quietly fall apart. We stay in it with you until it’s signed.
Who we work with
Founder-built service businesses.
If you built something on expertise and relationships rather than a factory floor, you’re who we’re built for.
- Size
- $1M–$10M EBITDA.
- Ownership
- Privately held and founder-owned, where the decision genuinely rests with you.
- Sectors
- Healthcare and medical or dental practices, accounting, staffing, IT and tech-enabled services, legal, wealth management, architecture and engineering, outsourced HR, payroll and benefits, insurance, licensing, and consumer services.
- Where
- Nationwide.
I built and exited my own company, so I know what it means to think about letting go of your life’s work. Now I help founders work through that same decision.
JP — founder, Tempest M&A Advisors
One conversation. No pitch, no pressure.
Thirty minutes to talk through where you are. Sometimes the answer is “not yet” — we’ll tell you.
Talk to usWe’ve been where you are. Now we help you get where you’re going.