Most sale processes lose value not at the negotiating table, but in the months before it. Unresolved separation, gaps in the financial trail, unsigned contracts and thin governance become the buyer's leverage. LaunchPad finds them first.
Watch the walkthrough · 3 min 05 · illustrative data
To find out more about LaunchPad, open this page on your computer.
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Every area a buyer will probe, asked first by us. We only ask for what your deal needs, so a carve-out and a whole-company sale each get the right questions.
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Every area of the business rated red, amber or green, with a written assessment behind each one and the issues a buyer will find set out by severity.
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Each finding becomes an action with an owner and a stated reason a buyer cares. It closes against evidence Helmshore reviews, not a box someone ticked.
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The things a buyer will ask for, built from your answers and the report's findings rather than lifted from a template, then gathered, checked and handed over ready for a commercial VDR provider.
Coverage
Every domain a buyer's diligence will reach, tailored to a company sale or a carve-out.
Built for confidential deal data
AI helps us draft and check. It runs in the UK and EU, has Zero Data Retention and never trains on your information. A Helmshore adviser reviews every draft it produces.
Your answers and documents are stored in London, behind a secure sign-in.
Everyone sees only what their role needs. The colleague gathering the leases sees the lease requests, and nothing more.
Access is enforced where the data is held, not just on screen.
Documents are deleted when the retention period in your engagement letter ends.
Every change is logged with who made it and when. No one can alter that log, including us.
The Fact Finder
It begins with a structured Fact Finder spanning every area a buyer will probe. We only ask for what your deal needs, so a carve-out and a whole-company sale each get the right questions. What comes out of it is the raw material for everything that follows.
Fact Finder · deal context · illustrative data
The Readiness Report
The Readiness Report is your diagnosis. It opens with an overall rating and an executive summary, then rates each area red, amber or green with a written assessment behind it. It says what is true and why a buyer will care.
Readiness Report · overall assessment · illustrative data
Key issues
Every issue is set out by severity, in the area it belongs to, with the facts as they stand and a plain statement of why a buyer cares. No euphemism and no reassurance: the value of the report is that it says the difficult thing before someone else does.
Readiness Report · key issues · illustrative data
The Preparation Plan
The Preparation Plan is the treatment. Every issue becomes an action inside a workstream, with the consequence of leaving it undone made explicit: does it protect price, protect the timetable, or risk the deal itself.
Preparation plan · a workstream · illustrative data
How an action closes
Open an action and you see the same four things every time: what it is, why a buyer cares, the evidence that closes it, and who owns it. The owner writes a response and attaches the document. Helmshore reviews it and either accepts it or says what is still missing. An action is closed by evidence, not by someone ticking a box.
Preparation plan · an action · illustrative data
Data room preparation
Helmshore builds the list of documents a buyer's advisers will ask for, from your answers and the report's findings, and issues it to you. The room then opens against that list, and your team adds documents to the requests they own. When the sale starts, the room goes to whichever commercial data room provider runs it, complete, numbered and named the way that provider expects.
Data room preparation · a heading in the room · illustrative data
The check
Every document is read as it's added. If it's unsigned, undated, still a draft, not what was asked for, or looks like another version of something already there, the person adding it is told straight away, while it's still easy to fix.
Data room preparation · a potential issue · illustrative data
Across the room
Helmshore then checks the room as a whole: a contract that refers to a document nobody has supplied, a company named differently in two places, a figure that does not match the same figure elsewhere.
Data room preparation · room check · illustrative data
Coming soon
A finished data room is not the end of diligence. It is the start of Q&A: several hundred questions, arriving over weeks, each one needing the right person, an accurate answer, and consistency with every document already in the room. It's where unprepared sellers come unstuck.
Where it goes wrong
Questions land when everyone is busy. Answers get drafted by whoever has an hour, contradict a document already sitting in the room, or arrive late enough to look like hesitation. A buyer reads all three the same way, and each one is leverage you handed over.
Why it can be prepared
A diligence question comes from something missing, something that does not reconcile, or something a document invites. The Readiness Report has already found those and the room shows exactly what is in it, so the questions can be written before anybody thinks to ask them.
What LaunchPad provides
Each anticipated question with a drafted answer, the document in the room that supports it, and the person who owns it. You settle them with your own team, at your own pace, before the room opens. Two bidders asking the same thing then get the same answer, because it was agreed once.
Helmshore Consulting brings sharp analytical thinking and seasoned commercial experience to the challenges that matter most. LaunchPad applies that discipline to the sales that have to be right first time: the owner selling the business they built, or the group divesting a division that is no longer core.
Founder
Adam has spent more than thirty years in M&A, on both sides of the table: advising on transactions at UBS Investment Bank, and leading them as a principal at Warner Bros and, most recently, as head of Corporate Development for Boldyn Networks. Across senior roles there and at KPMG he has bought, sold and integrated businesses in the TMT, infrastructure and energy sectors, on transactions spanning Europe, North America and South East Asia.
That experience is the foundation of Helmshore LaunchPad. Having sat on the buy side, Adam knows precisely where diligence teams look, what unsettles them, and what a well-prepared seller looks like from the other side of the table. The platform turns that judgement into a disciplined, evidenced process.
Adam works with a small number of clients at a time, personally and in confidence.
A short conversation is enough to scope a readiness engagement for your sale or carve-out. We will show you the platform and the path from diagnosis to a buyer-ready position.
A walkthrough of the platform · 3 min 05 · illustrative data