Rule five of Founders Help Line, and it is not about selling next year. It is whether the business would survive being examined, and whether it runs without you in the room. Eight questions.
Answer as the business is today, not as it will be after the thing you are about to fix.
Could a new revenue leader run your go-to-market from what is written down?
If the motion lives in the founder's head, it is not an asset. It is a dependency.
Can someone other than a founder close a deal end to end?
Buyers and boards both read founder-only selling as concentration risk.
Do your pipeline stages have entry and exit criteria applied the same way by everyone?
Forecast accuracy is the first thing diligence tests and the first thing that falls apart.
Is every material agreement in writing rather than a handshake?
Rule two of the book. Verbal agreements do not survive board meetings, and they do not survive diligence either.
Do you know what share of revenue your top three customers represent?
Not a guess. The actual number, and what happens to the valuation if the largest one leaves.
Is there a named person who could own revenue if you stepped back for a quarter?
Rule five. The most important go-to-market strategy you will design is your own exit.
Would two people pulling the same metric define it the same way?
Inconsistent definitions are how a data room turns a two-week process into a two-month one.
Could you produce clean revenue data for the last eight quarters within a week?
If the answer is no, that is not a finance problem. It is a systems problem and it discounts your price.
One email with your answers and the read. No sequence, no spam, and I am the only one who sees it.
This is the free version and you should go run it. If you want a real read on what is actually happening in your go-to-market, tell me where you are stuck and I will come back to you personally, as soon as I can.