Find out what buyers and lenders will challenge before they use it against you.
The buyer's QoE provider runs real math on your business — weeks after you've signed an LOI. By then the assumptions you've been operating on get tested against your own data, and the buyer pool narrows to whoever's still willing. Capital Refinery runs the same math privately, before anyone else does.
The problem rarely kills the deal. It reprices it.
A motivated buyer who finds a customer-concentration risk, a reporting gap, or a key-person dependency in diligence doesn’t usually walk — they use it. The number moves, the structure tightens, the earnout grows. By the time it surfaces in their QoE you’re negotiating from behind your own data. The only real leverage is to have found it first.
The buyer’s QoE runs this math weeks after you’ve signed the LOI. The $600K doesn’t end the deal — it reprices it by millions, and you’re arguing from behind your own numbers. The only leverage is to have run it on yourself first. That’s what the assessment does.
See a sample assessment →Four visible steps. Pay only for the evidence you actually need.
The price ladder isn't a feature gate — it's an evidence ladder. Each step costs more because each step proves more to a sophisticated reviewer. Most operators don't need to climb the whole thing.
- Step 01$750
Self-Assessment
See the risk privately.
Operator-attested intake, graded against the 10-axis framework. 4-page fingerprinted memo, forwardable to your CPA, banker, or advisor. Self-Assessed band — not externally verified. The $750 credits forward to the Gap Review within 90 days.
- Step 02$4,500
Readiness Gap Review
Find the top 5 diligence blockers.
Document-verified, limited scope. Five business days from upload to memo. Names the five blockers a sophisticated reviewer will hit first, plus the evidence each one requires to clear. Credits forward to the full IRA within 60 days.
- Step 03$12,500
Institutional Readiness Assessment
The artifact you can hand to advisors, buyers, lenders.
Full 10-axis institutional readiness assessment with a deterministic fingerprint and a public verification URL — LP-verifiable, the kind of portable document an institutional reviewer credits independently. You control where it goes: private by default, shareable with counterparties you authorize, and eligible — at your election — for publication and discovery on the Capital Refinery marketplace (coming soon). Source-backed verification travels with every permitted output.
- Step 04Re-IRA delta
Prove what changed.
Outcome language, not score language.
Re-run after remediation work lands. The delta artifact reports which blockers were eliminated, which gates remain, what diligence friction disappeared, and what new buyer or lender classes are now viable. Never says 'your score went up.'
Two paths to the same artifact.
The engine, the axes, the integrity discipline, and the fingerprinted memo are identical regardless of who introduces you. The only difference is the relationship the assessment lives inside.
Buy it yourself, on your own timeline.
If you're ready to begin and you don't have an advisor running the process for you, you can buy the Self-Assessment directly. Same memo, same fingerprint, same integrity discipline. The $750 credits forward to the Gap Review and to the full IRA on the usual windows.
Get matched with an advisor who already runs this.
Institutional-grade assessment more often enters through a CEPA, fractional CFO, wealth manager, or banker — someone whose engagement already covers this kind of measurement work. If you'd prefer that path, we'll match you with a channel partner whose practice fits your business.
If you already work with an advisor, ask them to run your Self-Assessment at channel pricing as part of their engagement. The artifact is the same either way — that's what makes it portable.
The boundary, named in advance.
Capital Refinery sells productized software for institutional readiness measurement. That's the entire business. Anything outside that boundary belongs to your existing advisors — and we don't want it either way.
- We do not value your business. The memo doesn't name a price, a multiple, or a valuation range. Those belong to your banker or your QoE provider.
- We do not broker your business. We don't introduce you to buyers, we don't take a transaction fee, and we don't carry inventory of deals.
- We do not replace your CPA or your attorney. The Self-Assessment is not a Quality of Earnings, not an audit, not a legal opinion, and not investment advice.
- We do not market to your clients behind your back. Tenant data is isolated; we don't aggregate, anonymize, or publish operator information.
Three reads, depending on what you want next.
The Self-Assessment is the entry point. These are the deeper reads if you'd rather understand the structural argument, see the engine on a real deal, or vet the methodology before paying for anything.
The deeper read
Why this exists, in twelve minutes.
The structural argument: why the transformation market industrialized supply without industrializing proof, why buyers and lenders use the 10-axis framework whether you know it or not, and why running the math privately changes which version of your company goes to market. /sellers-why-now
See it on a real deal
Cedarbrook — the walk-through.
A full Institutional Readiness Assessment rendered on a real lower-middle-market deal. The composite verdict, the gating axes, the named blockers, the partner-handoff brief, and the portable artifact a banker can forward to a buyer. /cedarbrook
Audit the methodology
The 10-axis framework in detail.
How the engine actually grades — the two gating axes, the documents-win rule, the verification-state machine, the sub-lane thresholds, and the integrity disciplines that make the verdict defensible to an institutional reviewer. /institutional-readiness
The lowest-friction way to find out is $750.
The Self-Assessment costs $750 because you paid to know. The memo can be honest, the verdict can land where it lands, and the named blockers can read like findings rather than marketing. Buy it directly, or let us match you with an advisor whose practice fits your business.