Writing & Analysis
Essays on what I'm building and learning
Long-form thinking on private markets, healthcare venture, corp-dev, and building without inherited networks. Newsletter: What the Data Room Doesn't Say, on Substack.
Subscribe →Start here
For students & founders
New to my work? Read the featured essay, then work with me if you're a leader, founder, or student facing a decision.
After years inside corporate development watching deals get priced on gut and precedent, I built the thesis for Value Alpha: institutional valuation infrastructure for the 99% of M&A that happens below $50M, starting in the US and now Poland. This is the full argument, why the tooling is broken, what fixing it requires, and why it's a defining infrastructure opportunity in finance and AI.
Healthcare startups don't die from small markets. They die on a Tuesday.
Why I back the operation, not the market size, and why complexity is the best moat in healthcare venture.
In private markets, the house has already read everyone's cards.
Public markets reward analysis. Private markets reward access. I built two companies on closing that gap.
I built in American finance without a single warm intro. It became my edge.
No rolodex, no benefit of the doubt. Why that became the most useful analytical tool I have.
What I gave a nonprofit, and what it gave back.
Four months building an investment reserve policy for the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, and a lesson in what business school is for.
The cofounder is the most expensive line on your cap table.
Choosing a cofounder and building an AI-era team, read like a valuation: roles, equity, decision rights, and the failure modes.
The AI-Native Valuation Benchmark
How AI-native companies are actually priced when the comps break: the AI-ready premium, the AI-exposure discount, and the comps gap.
How to value a pre-revenue startup when there are no comps.
A pre-revenue valuation is a negotiated number, not a calculation. How to triangulate a defensible range and defend it.
What corporate development really pays for when it buys your company.
The buy-side view of getting acquired, from the seat across the table. What strategics pay for, and why structure beats the headline.
How to know you have product-market fit.
PMF is not a vibe. How to measure it with retention and pull, the false signals, and what the value cliff is really worth.
How to handle a down round.
The headline is the least important number. How anti-dilution, structure, and the alternatives decide what a down round really costs.
How to read a cap table.
Ownership percentage is the least useful number on the page. How fully diluted shares, the option pool, and the waterfall decide what you keep.
Raising on SAFEs: the dilution you signed and forgot.
Each SAFE looks small. The stack is not. How post-money SAFEs convert, why the dilution compounds silently, and when to price the round.
Your 409A is not your valuation.
A company has two prices at all times. What a 409A actually does, why common is worth less than preferred, and which number answers which question.
How VCs actually decide whether to fund you.
You are pitching a machine, not a person. The funnel, the portfolio math, and the ownership target behind every pitch meeting, with real numbers.
How much should you actually raise?
The ask is a valuation decision in disguise. Milestone-back sizing, the dilution budget, and the bar the money sets.
How I price a company in 48 hours.
A valuation is an opinion you can defend. The full process, hour by hour: intake, normalized numbers, a size-first comp set, triangulation, and a range.
The five term sheet clauses that move money.
The valuation is the price of the round. The clauses are the price of the exit. Five clauses ranked by dollars moved, with worked math and the counter for each.
What I learned about M&A pricing after running 1,000+ valuations
I came to American M&A through the back door. A thousand valuations later, here is what the data taught me about how private companies are really priced.
I left billion-dollar deals to price ten-million-dollar businesses
What a $26 billion merger taught me about the 99% of M&A that runs on guesswork, and why I left to price the businesses no one builds tooling for.
on Substack Subscribe →