About Guardian Due Diligence
The diligence solution for first-time buyers and self-funded searchers. Let our team of 17 CPAs team handle the details so you can focus on the deal.
The Importance of Financial Diligence in Business Acquisitions
Are you an entrepreneur, individual or investor looking to buy a business? This process can have many twists and turns that may not come out in your favor. You want to have accurate information on the EBITDA or Sellers Discretionary Earnings (SDE). You should be able to acquire a business with comfort that the numbers are solid and the seller is not fooling you. Your lenders and equity partners want and need the same. Good financial diligence provides you comfort that you’re not buying a bad business and risking your entire net worth on a personal guarantee. Diligence is critical.
Guardian’s 17-Person Team is Lead By:
Elliott Holland, Managing Partner
Who is Elliott? Elliott is an expert in the acquisition of small and medium sized businesses. He helps first-time buyers like you manage through the challenging and nuanced due diligence process. He’s been in this space since before they called it ETA. His burning desire is to take you through a comprehensive diligence process and guard you from expensive mistakes based on his vast experience in the deal business.
Why should you trust him? Navigate the nuances of Letter of Intent negotiations with finesse.
Why Guardian? He started Guardian because the diligence solutions for smaller deals frankly stink. He created a better solution to help buyers avoid doing bad deals and help buyers execute deals with confidence. We all want confidence when making million dollar investments.
How long has Elliott focused on vetting smaller deals? He caught the acquisition bug in 2009 - his first year of business school, then worked in private equity (PE) in order to gain skills from the nations best business acquirers. Like you, he started his own firm to go out and buy companies in the automotive, industrial, and healthcare space.
Our Experience
Our experience spans over $600 million in transactions and over 1,500 deals evaluated.
Guardian started out of founder Elliott Holland’s deep frustration with the availability of due diligence resources for deals under $5 million in enterprise value.
Elliott Holland has spent over a decade 100% focused on deals under $5 million. Before starting Guardian he spent 6 years as an independent sponsor and for each deal would have to interview dozens of CPAs and dozens of lawyers just to find firms that were both competent and cost effective. Granted, there is no shortage of lawyers or CPAs. But on the accounting side, it’s easy to get a Quality of Earnings provider to create a full report for $40-$80k. But if you need a firm to do something less than a QOE – you’ll have trouble.
Also, if 10 hours of work shows the financials are terribly off - then a client centered accountant should stop. But most accountants won't stop and won't do anything less than full report so once you begin you are locked in to the full amount no matter what the interim analysis uncovers. You might also want a more limited scope like a comparison of bank statements to financials or a working capital analysis. Given how most CPA firms are structured they cannot produce this work on a stand-alone basis because they have too much overhead to cover. The current CPA solutions are not customer centered.
Let’s be real. Are you paying $75,000 for a Quality of Earnings on a $5 million deal?
Furthermore, for CPAs their professional aversion to risk creates large amounts of friction and back-and-forth on diligence that adds fees to your deal without adding value. After living this for six years, Elliott knew there needed to be a better solution.
Elliott knew the solution would be using the top CPAs that he has already vetted to deliver cost effective value to clients. He knew there was value in those hours of vetting and that people would benefit from that curated list of professionals along with a seasoned deal professional to drive the transaction forward.
We provide more than just a QoE. Our due diligence services all come with a layer of expert deal advisory to help you through valuations, LOIs & negotiations with sellers and brokers.
Guardian was founded in 2017 to provide market leading due diligence and deal advisory solutions to acquisition entrepreneurs, ETA entrepreneurs, and deal professionals. But the principals of Guardian have been in the industry since 2009 and bring that experience to our clients. Our services include layered due diligence analysis along with the comprehensive deal support. We provide all the solutions inside one firm. We bring the best vetted resources to your deal in a cost effective way that adds tremendous value.
