Technology partners for business acquisition
Turn the business you bought into the business you saw.
Trellis reads the technology of the business you’re buying — then stays to rebuild it. A fixed-fee diligence report before close, a hundred-day sprint after, and structure that compounds from there.
For searchers, holdcos & independent sponsors
The inheritance
You didn’t buy the technology. You bought the tangle.
Most diligence prices the P&L and ignores the machinery that produces it. Then the keys change hands — and you’ve signed a personal guarantee on systems you’ve never seen.
01
The knowledge leaves in the handover
Twenty years of how-things-actually-work lives in the seller’s head. The seller is leaving.
02
Operations run on heroics
Spreadsheets, memory, and the one employee who knows where everything is. That isn’t a system — it’s a single point of failure with a salary.
03
The numbers can’t answer questions
You know revenue. You don’t know margin by customer, job, or line — so you’re pricing the future on instinct.
04
Systems chosen for the last decade
Software bought in 2011, patched ever since, reconciled by hand every Friday afternoon.
How we work
First the soil. Then the structure.
Three engagements, one arc. The report prices the sprint; the sprint earns the retainer. Nothing open-ended.
01
Before you close
Survey
The Tech Diligence Report · fixed fee from $7,500
What actually runs the business, what breaks the day the owner leaves, and what the fix costs — delivered in ten business days, beside your QoE. You walk in knowing.
02
The first hundred days
Plant
The Stabilization Sprint · scoped in your report
Books you can trust, operations in one system instead of nine spreadsheets, and nothing that lives only in one person’s head. Fixed scope, priced before you close.
03
Quarter after quarter
Trellis
The Growth Retainer · month to month
Automation where the work is manual, visibility where decisions are blind, AI where it pays for itself. We stay while the leverage compounds — and only while it does.
Points of leverage
Small moves. Outsized force.
A trellis doesn’t make the plant grow. It gives growth something to climb. These are the structures we build most often.
Numbers that answer questions
Margin by customer, job, and product — live, not six weeks later in a spreadsheet.
Operations without retyping
Quote to invoice to collections in one flow. Your team stops being the integration layer.
Pricing with evidence
Most acquired businesses haven’t raised prices properly in years. The data finds the room.
A business that runs without you
Documented, systemized, delegated — the difference between buying a job and buying an asset.
Customer experience that compounds
Answer in minutes, quote in hours, and look like the biggest operator in your market.
AI where it pays
Not a chatbot on the website. Automation of the expensive, repetitive judgment calls.
“Small businesses don’t need more software. They need structure to grow on.”
In the garden, not on a call
We work inside your business — your meetings, your team, your vendors. A partner who shows up, not a deck that gets emailed.
Month to month
No lock-in, no long retainers. If the leverage stops compounding, stop paying. We stay because the work is working.
Outcomes, not hours
Every engagement points at a number — hours saved, margin found, revenue unlocked — and we report against it monthly.
Fair questions
Asked on almost every deal.
We’re only under LOI. Is it too early?
It’s the right time. The report is built to sit inside diligence — it can reprice your offer, reshape the transition plan, or tell you to walk before you sign the guarantee.
We already have a QoE firm.
Good — keep them. QoE reads the statements; we read the systems that produce them. The two reports answer different questions about the same business, and they’re stronger side by side.
The business barely has any technology.
That is the finding, not a reason to skip it. “It runs on the owner’s memory” is the most expensive system there is — the report tells you what replacing it costs, in dollars and in months.
What does it cost?
The diligence report is a fixed fee, quoted before we start. The sprint is scoped and priced inside the report itself, so you know the cost of the fix before you close. The retainer is month to month — cancel any time.
The gate is open.
Under LOI? Mid-diligence? Six months in and drowning in the tangle? Send us the deal. The first conversation is free — and candid.