You run a business turning over £5–20m. The early-stage scramble is behind you, the profits are real and predictable — and somehow it all still runs through you.
That isn’t a personal failing. It’s structural. The instinct that built the company — be in every decision, every deal, every hire — is the same instinct that now caps it. At £5m, being central is an advantage. At £15m, it’s the bottleneck.
A private equity exit isn’t selling out, and it isn’t a finish line. It’s the lever: the capital and senior leadership to scale the business past you, and the way to turn a paper valuation into diversified, life-changing wealth. But PE buyers don’t pay premium multiples for potential. They pay for a business that already runs without its founder.
That’s the work, and it’s why we built APEX — Assess, Plan, Execute, eXit. We start two to four years before the deal, not two months: build the asset, then sell it on your terms.
You’ve built something most founders never will. The question isn’t whether it’s valuable. It’s whether you’ll leave money on the table the way most founders do — or get it ready, properly, before you cash out.
You don’t reach a premium exit by accident, and you don’t reach it alone. The businesses PE buyers pay top multiples for are built deliberately — over two to four years — to run without the founder and to survive due diligence that feels like a never-ending colonoscopy. That’s what APEX is for: the method we’ve used from both sides of the PE table, not generic advice from people who’ve only read the playbook. It names what’s actually capping your valuation, then closes the gap between the business you have and the one a buyer pays a premium for.
In practice, that means fixing what buyers quietly price down: numbers they can’t trust, a sales engine that depends on you, margin left in unsold upsells, a leadership team that still routes every decision through the founder. We find the hidden value before the buyer does, build the systems that prove it, and get the business to where it runs — and grows — without you in every meeting. That isn’t sprucing up the financials for a sale. It’s building an asset worth more than the one you have today, then selling it on your terms.
Knightscale is led by people who’ve built and scaled real companies — and come through a private-equity exit firsthand. You’re getting entrepreneurs who’ve sat on both sides of the table, not consultants handing over frameworks they’ve only read about.
Founder of New Access, a private banking software. He scaled the company to employ over 500 employees, with annual sales of over 50 million. Negotiated an exit through private equity for an undisclosed 9-figure sum. This success made him one of the most prominent advisors in the UK, guiding founders and SMEs on crafting strategic plans and future-proofing growth. In 2024 he published his first best-selling book, “Cashing Out”. He holds an Executive MBA from the University of Oxford.
Natalia Amer is a people and talent leader with 15+ years of global experience across healthcare, technology, life sciences, and ecommerce. She designs the people infrastructure behind high-growth businesses—aligning strategy, structure, and culture to scale teams without losing what makes them work. She has built international talent functions and led teams across EMEA, APAC, the US, and LATAM through rapid expansion and change. Based in Zurich, she holds an Executive MBA from the University of Oxford.
Specializing in pitch development for founders. Four-time best-selling author. Voted one of the top 10 business speakers in Tampa Bay. In 2017, he was one of 3 finalists for Business Leader of the Year through the Greater Tampa Chamber of Commerce. He graduated from the University of Oxford with an Executive MBA and volunteers to mentor students at the University of Tampa’s entrepreneurship center. He is also a member of UT’s Board of Fellows.
We offer two services, built for founders who’ve outgrown doing it all themselves:
Work directly with one of our founders — someone who’s built, scaled, and exited a company themselves. They take you through APEX in person: diagnosing what’s capping your valuation, building the plan, and staying in your corner from the first session to the signed deal. Not a junior consultant on a retainer — a founder who’s sat exactly where you are.
When a business reaches £5–20m, it needs senior leadership it isn’t ready to hire full-time — but the answer isn’t renting an executive by the day. The Virtual C-Suite deploys a team — a CFO, a COO, a CMO and the specialists around them — that takes ownership of a defined project with clear goals: investor-ready numbers, a sales engine that runs without you, a business built to sell. We’re not a consulting firm handing over a deck. Our people are entrepreneurs who’ve built and exited companies themselves, and they own the plan until it’s delivered.
