The paper · August 2026
Who The Hell Knows
Nobody can confidently price AI in a deal right now. Twenty pages on what you can actually test for instead, written for investors and buyers of SaaS, tech-enabled services and any business now claiming to be AI-led.
Twenty pages · about a 25 minute read
Your email, then the PDF. No sequence, no sales call unless you ask for one.
What's inside
Three parts, one question.
Part One
The market you're underwriting
Why the same growth number prices two completely different ways right now, and what the split multiples are actually saying about defensibility.
Part Two
The targets you evaluate
AI-native or AI-branded: a working checklist for the room, with a scored diagnostic you can run against a live target.
Part Three
The partner you choose
How to pick a diligence partner fit for a market this unresolved, before an LOI rather than after.
Why us on this question
Written from live deals, not theory.
Ten diligences a month. Quality over quantity.
Capacity is capped on purpose. In a decade we have assessed 200+ deals and issued two fully green reports. The average unbudgeted technology spend we uncover is around £250k, with a range from £20k to several million. Found before close it is priceable. Found after, it is a write-off.
We do not stop at the opinion. Post-Merger Integration is the practice we are built around: Day 1 readiness, transitional service exit, consolidation, and the savings and gains you priced the deal on, delivered and tracked. That is what makes the paper's advice usable rather than academic.
After you've read it
Prefer the spoken version, or have a live deal?
Five short films walk through the same argument, with a diagnostic you can score a target against. Or bring the target and we will give you a straight opinion on how real the AI is, before an LOI rather than after.