Seller's Readiness Gap

Most founders believe their business is worth what they think it earns, runs like they think it runs, and is protected by the contracts they think they signed. The seller’s readiness gap is the distance between that belief and what a buyer can actually verify. It shows up everywhere: financials that don’t survive a quality of earnings review, contracts with change-of-control clauses nobody flagged, key relationships that exist only in the founder’s phone, and systems that depend on one person’s institutional knowledge. The gap matters because buyers don’t price what you tell them — they price what they can confirm. Every unverifiable claim becomes a risk, and every risk becomes a deduction. Closing the readiness gap is the entire point of exit preparation: making the business you’re selling match the business the buyer can see in the numbers, the contracts, the team, and the systems.