Stage 2, Pre-Close / LOI

You close in 60 days. Here's what needs to happen before Day 1.

Every day between now and close, institutional knowledge is at risk of walking out the door. The moment the deal is announced, key employees start updating their LinkedIn profiles. The operational DNA of the business, the part that actually makes it run, doesn't live in a file. It lives in people's heads.

Book a Pre-Close Readiness Call See the Operator's Playbook

Pre-Close or LOI, capture institutional knowledge before it walks

The window nobody uses

Most acquirers use the LOI window for legal and financial work only. That's the mistake.

The window between LOI and close is the most underutilized stretch of every acquisition. Most acquirers spend it entirely on legal and financial diligence. The operational intelligence, the workflows, the undocumented processes, and the knowledge living inside key employees, sits there untouched.

Then the owner leaves. The bookkeeper retires. The two people who quietly run the operation start taking recruiter calls. And the operational DNA of the business goes with them.

The acquirers who struggle in year one usually didn't skip this knowledge because they were careless. They skipped it because nobody was running the operational track in parallel with the legal and financial ones.

Knowledge walks, 30 to 90 days of institutional knowledge at risk of leaving forever

What the window is actually for

Capture what you're actually buying before you own it.

The period between LOI and close is your only clean window to capture what you're actually buying. Not the assets on the balance sheet. The operational knowledge that makes the business function.

FGN deploys AI-assisted employee interviews and knowledge capture systems during this window. We interview key staff, capture their workflows, dependencies, and undocumented processes, then run it through an AI synthesis pipeline that turns raw conversations into structured operational maps.

You walk into Day 1 with a real blueprint, not a best guess. The deliverable has a name, the Operator's Playbook. Fix-first priorities. Retention risks. Systems inventory. A 100-day operational roadmap. In your hands before you sit in the owner's chair.

The Operator's Playbook, a Day 1 ready deliverable with org map, risk register, 100 day plan, and KPI baseline

Operational Due Diligence, the full engagement

Know what you're walking into before you sign.

What you get

The Operator's Playbook built around your key team, what they know, what they do, and what breaks if they leave.
Recorded employee interviews linked to the workflows they actually run.
Key-person dependency analysis identifying the staff the business quietly runs on.
Annotated process registers that turn tribal knowledge into usable documentation.
A systems inventory showing what technology is fully owned, loosely used, or quietly held together with workarounds.
A pre-close 100-day plan built from real operational input, not seller memory.

What this solves

The seller is not hostile to handover. They just do not have a structured operational debrief ready to give you. The owner leaves with everything in their head, you inherit the business, and you are suddenly flying blind. We solve that before close.

Best for

Searchers and operators closing one to three acquisitions a year who want to know who actually runs the business and what operational risks exist before it is too late to act on them.

The six things we run during the window

One window. Six operating tracks.

AI-Assisted Employee Knowledge Capture

Structured interviews with key staff. Workflows, dependencies, and the things that never make it into SOPs. AI turns those conversations into operational maps and risk registers.

Key-Person Dependency Analysis

Identify who the business actually runs on, what they hold, and what gets exposed if they leave after the deal is announced.

Undocumented Process Mapping

Surface the institutional knowledge living in people's heads instead of a system, handbook, or dashboard.

Systems & Tech Stack Inventory

Get a clean read on what tools, software, and infrastructure the business truly runs on before Day 1 surprises start stacking up.

Operator's Playbook

The Day-1 blueprint. Fix-first priorities, retention risks, systems inventory, and a 100-day roadmap in your hands before you take the chair.

Day-1 Dashboard Pre-Configuration

We pre-configure the AI Operations layer during the LOI window so the visibility layer can go live the moment the deal closes.

Capabilities lit up at this stage

The two capabilities that matter before close.

Primary capability

Operational Due Diligence

This is the signature FGN capability for the LOI-to-close window. The full engagement runs here.

Read the capability →

Pre-configured next

AI Operations

We use this window to prepare the dashboard and accountability layer so it is ready for Day 1 activation.

Read the capability →

Coming soon

Hear from operators in the LOI window.

Conversations with operators reflecting on what they captured, what they missed, and what they would handle differently during diligence are publishing soon. Want the early read now? Book a Pre-Close Readiness Call and we'll walk through real examples live.

The consultation

Pre-Close Readiness Call

A free 30-minute working session to map your LOI-to-close window and identify what needs to happen operationally before Day 1. Tell us your close date, the business you're acquiring, and what you have already started. We'll come prepared with a working sequence, what happens first, what can wait, and what is load-bearing.