EV Decision Tool — Phase-1 prototype

Every deal pulls three levers:
growth, margin, and multiple.

Most deal debates only weigh growth. Every deal also moves margin and multiple, and this tool prices all three in one currency: what the company is worth at exit.

Sometimes the right call is to suboptimize a part (a quarter, a line, an account) to optimize the whole.

Lever 1

Growth

Grow revenue through new markets, products, and customers. It's the lever every deal debate already covers: the top line a deal adds and what it throws off.

Lever 2

Margin

Improve EBITDA margins. For a deal, that means what actually reaches EBITDA once its true overhead is loaded in, not the contribution margin on the quote sheet.

Lever 3

Multiple

Increase exit value by strengthening fundamentals and reducing risk. It's the price a buyer pays for everything we make, moved by customer concentration, vertical mix, and how sticky the revenue is.

A buyer doesn't pay for revenue. They pay earnings × a multiple, and safer, higher-quality earnings earn a higher multiple. A deal can win on one lever and quietly cost more than it brings on the other two, so Value Lens nets all three into one comparable number and effort goes where it builds the most company.

A real kind of debate, priced

Two deals. Same $5M of sales. Opposite values.

These are live numbers from the scoring engine on our current assumptions, not an illustration.

Taking Deal A optimizes a quarter.
Passing on it optimizes the company.

Same top line, a $5.6M swing in what the company is worth, and none of it shows up if you only look at the growth lever. That's the whole point of pricing all three.

About these numbers. The multiples here are assumptions, not market data. They're written in the Constitution, editable, and will be pressure-tested by our investors, our advisors, and time. The tool doesn't value the company. It scores every deal against the same assumptions, so deals compare fairly even though the absolute dollars are uncertain. Direction holds across a wide range of assumptions: Deal A scores negative and Deal B positive in every tested case. Read the results as directional, not a valuation.

Type in a deal, and watch all three levers move as you change it.

The deal

levers the room debatesVariable guide ↗

Deal name optional

Incremental revenue iThe new revenue this adds at steady-state run-rate, not year-one ramp, not business you'd have won anyway. If it cannibalizes existing sales, net that out. Only the genuinely incremental portion counts.

Contribution margin iRevenue minus variable costs (COGS, freight, ongoing trade spend), the honest incremental number. The tool subtracts the overhead this deal pulls (via complexity + capacity) to get fully-loaded EBITDA margin, so don't pre-load overhead here.

Vertical: which book the earnings land in iA dollar of branded EBITDA and a dollar of co-man EBITDA are not worth the same enterprise value; buyers underwrite them at different multiples. Classify hybrid deals by where the earnings sit, not where the activity happens.

Customer: who the revenue lands with iThe single biggest controllable lever. At the $100M exit every existing customer holds its current dollars; this deal piles onto the customer you pick (or opens a new one). Feeding your largest customer drives single-customer share up toward the 40% salability cliff; a new customer leaves your largest account near ~33% and keeps the book diversified.

Probability of realization iLikelihood the deal lands and holds at the stated revenue and margin. Risk-adjusts EBITDA before any multiple, so a maybe can't borrow a yes's valuation. Think in bands, don't default everything to 100%.

Complexity tier iHow much the deal fragments the business vs. fits cleanly. In-core · Moderate · High. It raises the overhead the deal pulls in the margin bridge: more complex work eats more fixed cost. Both moat-building and focus-fragmenting complexity raise the tier.

Capacity load opt. iLow / Med / High read on the finite capacity and management bandwidth the deal eats. Nudges how much overhead the deal pulls in the CM→EBITDA bridge.

Durability of the revenue iEveryday-embedded (stickiest) > recurring-seasonal franchise (proven) > one-time/unproven LTO (gets gutted in quality-of-earnings). Now wired two ways: it claws back part of the multiple discount on the deal's earnings, and softens the concentration the deal adds (the customer is less likely to leave), but it never opens the 40% gate.

Months to steady state iWhen the deal reaches proven, steady-state run-rate. Past the exit-window deadline (horizon − buffer), a buyer can't underwrite the ramp and the deal gates on maturity.

Verdict

gate check × exit-value delta

the call · exit $100M

Adds value

The three vertical anchor multiples are illustrative placeholders pending advisor review, not final valuations.

Where the exit-value change comes from

Hover a bar to peek · click to keep the breakdown open

▸ How the number is built (rigorous underneath)

Portfolio

Every live opportunity on one matrix, gated deals struck through where they sit.

Decision matrixcost × exit-value · size = revenue

Lifts exit value Discuss / near-neutral Costs exit value Gated (red ✕)

Deals0 in book

No deals yet.Score a deal in the Score tab, then Add to portfolio to plot it here.

Bulk add from spreadsheet

Fill the template in Excel (the dropdowns keep entries valid), then File → Save As → CSV and upload the CSV here.

A decision-support prototype, not a valuation or financial advice. Open the Constitution to see and edit every input.

Reference: the Constitution, assumptions, rationale & sources · how to read the tool: variable guide