Kane & Company
Your business is the keystone of someone else’s value-build.
A capability and its moat, a body of proprietary data, a channel, a regulatory posture, the credibility of your people, a mission — any one of these can become the catalyst inside a value story an acquirer is already building. Not a part bolted on to patch a gap, but the element that energizes the whole and accelerates their progress toward it.
Inside that story, the part is worth far more than it ever was standing alone. Our entire job is to find the acquirer for whom your contribution is the specific element that energizes their whole value story at their scale — and to make them see it in their own terms.
We don’t negotiate up from a comp.
The conventional sale anchors on comparable multiples, then haggles for an increment. That game makes “a little better than the comp” feel like a win. We think it’s the wrong plane entirely.
Describes the business as management sees itself — its strengths sharpened on its own terms, in isolation. It suits a buyer who will improve it along that same path: add capital, install KPIs, optimize what is already there. A useful baseline — but it anchors low, caps the upside at an increment above the comp, and never asks what the business is worth to someone playing a bigger game.
Asks the acquirer to size the equity value your business adds to their trajectory — the gain captured or the loss avoided — and to price against that delta. When you are the keystone at their scale, that number lives on a far higher plane.
A comparable multiple tells you what a business is worth as it stands. I’m retained to find the one acquirer for whom it’s the missing piece — and to price against what it builds for them. Same business, a very different number.
We bring this case to the principal with the vision — the one who can see how a missing piece advances where they are already headed. The finance and accounting teams who eventually model and paper the deal do essential, exacting work; they simply start from precedent, which is the wrong place to discover what a keystone is worth. We open the conversation where the value is actually created, and let the structuring follow. See the full method →
We isolate the contribution and show you where it lands — so you can price it in your own terms.
Serious people will not move on a suggestion of how a business “conceivably” might help. So we do not offer one — and neither do we hand you a finished valuation of your own business, as though we knew it better than you do.
We isolate the specific contribution and identify the variables in your own engine it actually moves — its source, its basis, and the causal linkage laid out, so your own people know exactly where to begin the calculation. This is engineering, not spin. We do not express what is not there, and we do not mischaracterize. The claim is not true because we say it; it is true, and we show precisely why — with independent, dated, sourced proof attached. We can run the numbers, and we know how; but you know your business better than we ever could, so we point you to the cause and effect and let you put the number on it.
That rigor is deliberate, and it is the invitation: the contribution mapped to the drivers it moves equips you to come back with a proposal priced on what the business adds to your trajectory — not on a multiple. We do the serious work first, and let the work carry the weight.
Four disciplined stages.
Isolate and reconfigure the value elements
We free each value element from the way the business sees itself, then reconfigure to maximize its actual propellent contribution to a specific acquirer’s growth machinery — with proof attached to every claim.
Find the keystone buyer at the highest scale
We map who is building a trajectory in which your business is the missing piece — and rank by how central it is and how large the value-build, because scale sets the pricing framework.
Build the case — and connect every dot
We express the business in each buyer’s own language and logic, open on their acute need, and trace the full causal chain: the exposure, the exact mechanism that closes it, and the equity value it unlocks — documented and reproducible.
Run a disciplined process
Multi-threaded, banker-to-banker, confidential. The counterparty engages on the value-build — not on an increment above a comp.
Michael Kane, Managing Partner.
What a client of this firm hires is one person’s judgment, and the method rests on it. So the background below is held to the firm’s own standard of proof: nothing asserted that isn’t sourced. It is here not to impress, but to show where the capability was actually built — and lived.
The training is in finding what is real and applying numbers to measure cause and effect. The doctorate was preparatory to a tenure as Project Leader in the Systems Sciences Department of the RAND Corporation — the institution that originated systems analysis: isolating the true drivers of a complex system and quantifying their effect. That is precisely the work performed on every engagement — isolate the causal contribution, and size it.
Layered onto that: a law degree, and three decades of closed strategic transactions across public and private companies — hundreds of companies and scenarios evaluated, thousands of executives interviewed, business sales, mergers, acquisitions, IPOs, De-SPACs, and restructurings. It is the same habit of mind throughout, and it is why the case we bring holds up under a sophisticated, technically literate C-suite.
Verify the securities-industry record on FINRA’s BrokerCheck. Full background →
What principals say.
“Michael Kane has the most experience of anyone you’ll likely meet in making successful deals — an astounding range of business types, business conditions, and buyers. He knows what’s possible, and what is a waste of time.”
“Mike is like four or five board members in one person. Finance, ops, strategy — he’s seen it all, and if you come up with something he hasn’t, he figures it out quickly. He can find and extract value, and his depth lets him be an accepted partner for management teams.”
A confidential conversation.
For owners, boards, and acquirers evaluating a strategic transaction. Inquiries are held in confidence.
Michael Kane, Ph.D., J.D. · Managing Partner, Kane & Company
Firm line 310-441-5263