The expensive way to find out
Every one of these is cheap to fix early and expensive to discover late.
Scott has watched founders pay for each of them, from both sides of the table: as the operator who ran a nutrition manufacturer through its growth and sale, and as the investor reading the decks that come in now. None of it is exotic. It is the same six things, found by someone else, at the worst possible time.
A first run priced on the plant’s quote, not your real cost. The margin you planned on is gone before the pallet lands, and the minimum order is already paid.
A raise that goes well in the meetings and stalls in the follow-up. The reason is in the file they asked for afterwards, and nobody tells you which page it was.
Margin that disappears under a distributor. Forty percent at wholesale becomes single digits after the middle layer, trade spend and freight. The investor does that arithmetic in the room.
One customer that is most of the business. You did not name it, so they did, in the second meeting, in worse words than yours.
A company that runs on you. A buyer prices that as a job with a discount attached, or as three more years of you in an earn-out.
An offer answered with a number instead of a process. The negotiation is lost before it starts, because the buyer’s team found the discount before you did.
