The Standard Wine Co.
Built a category leader, then an acquisition
Brand and go to market built from the ground up, then financial and strategic advice through to a landmark sale.
Acquired by leading premium fine wine importer
The moments that shape what you end up with, planned properly.
You've built something that works. Now the decisions get bigger. Where the next stage of growth comes from, what AI and automation could take off your plate, whether to raise, acquire, merge, or take the offer on the table. Some of it you can test. The big ones, you only get one go at.
The questions nobody's answered yet.
Not the ones about running the business. You've had those covered for years. The other ones.
What actually needs to happen first, if you want to be out of this in three years.
How you give the people who built it with you a real share of it, how much is right, and what that does to everything else.
What happens to your money, and your family's, the day an investor comes in.
How you get yourself out of the middle of it without the whole thing wobbling.
They're not questions your accountant gets asked, and they're not questions with one answer. What they have in common is that the good version of each one starts years before anyone needs it to.
You've lived in it for years. We'll say it back the way a buyer hears it.
What matters about this business is in how you talk about it, and it never quite comes across on paper. You know which relationships hold it together, which numbers move for reasons that are not in the accounts, and what would break if you changed one thing.
All of it has to end up somewhere another person can act on it. Something an investor will back, a buyer will price, or a team can run when you are not there. That is the part that takes the time, and it starts long before anyone is ready to sell.
Almost all of it comes back to structure.
How the whole thing is put together. Which entity owns what, where the value has been accumulating, how you are paid, what sits inside the business and what sits beside it. It is the least visible part of the job and it decides the most.
It is also where the business and the personal side stop being separate questions. When money finally moves, structure is what decides how much of it reaches you and your family rather than going somewhere else. Set up years out, that is planning. Set up six months out, it is damage control.
Wherever you are in the journey, planning starts earlier than you would think.
Growing into something bigger
A new market, a different ownership model, an acquisition, or finally getting the business to run without you in the middle of it.
Getting ready to raise
The kind of money you take, the way the business is put together, and how you explain it. All three have to line up before you go near an investor.
Working out what's next
An offer, a timeline, a successor, or the slow realisation that you'd like your life back. What a business earns and what a buyer pays are two different numbers.
Not specifiedHome section 5 secondary action “See what that looks like →”: no destination is written down in the source folder. Confirm where it goes and it will be linked.
What it looks like when it has gone well.
The business runs without you in it, and you find out because you took three weeks off and nobody needed to call you. The numbers hold up when someone who isn't on your side goes through them. You and your family end up with what you planned for, because that was settled years ago and not in the final fortnight. The people who built it with you are looked after. And the timing was yours.
Whether you're three years out or three months in, the earlier we're in it, the more of that is still yours to decide.
A few of the moments we've helped get right.
Different sizes, different industries, one thing in common: something significant was about to happen.
ID Verse, now part of Lexis Nexis
Alongside the founders, from inception to a cross border sale
Investor mandates, due diligence and deal structuring, through to acquisition by a global risk provider.
Acquired by global risk provider Lexis Nexis
Your next moment is coming. Let's be in it early.
Whether you're two years out from an exit or two months into a raise, the earlier we're involved, the more room there is to change the outcome.