The decision comes first
We’ll help you work out whether to sell before we ever talk about how. If the answer is “not yet,” that’s a real answer and you’ll get it straight.
Our story
We’ve been where you are.
Tempest exists because the hardest part of selling a company isn’t the process. It’s deciding — and almost nobody helps with that part.
The founder
JP
I built a company. I ran it for years, and then I sold it — which meant first working out whether I actually wanted to, which took a lot longer than the sale did.
What I remember most clearly isn’t the negotiation. It’s the period before, when I wasn’t sure whether what I was feeling was real or just a bad quarter. I didn’t know who to ask. Friends and family were supportive and had no idea what I was weighing. The advisors I met were only interested once I’d already decided, which was precisely the part I hadn’t managed to do.
Now I do this on the other side of the table. Founders come to me somewhere in that same fog, and the first thing I can offer is that I know the feeling and it’s legitimate. The rest — the modeling, the buyers, the process — comes after.
I’ve already walked the path you’re considering — building something real, then figuring out when it’s time for what’s next.
The name
Why Tempest
In 2020, still running my own company, I listened to a winery owner explain why he hadn’t produced wine that year. The wildfires had touched the fruit, and he wasn’t willing to put something out under his name unless he was proud of it. He called it his life’s work.
That phrase stayed with me. And it landed somewhere unexpected: the company I’d built didn’t have to be my only life’s work. There could be a second one, built with the same care.
The wine poured that evening was called The Tempest.
The name isn’t about storms. It’s about transformation — the point at which one thing genuinely becomes another.
What we believe
Three things we won’t compromise on.
Plain language, always
You shouldn’t need to learn a vocabulary to understand what’s happening to your own company. If we say something you don’t follow, that’s our failure, not yours.
The right buyer, not any buyer
Who takes it over matters — to your employees, your clients, and to how you feel about this in five years. The highest bid isn’t automatically the best outcome.
Start with a conversation.
No pitch, no pressure, and no expectation that you’ve made up your mind.
Talk to usWe’ve been where you are. Now we help you get where you’re going.