Two years ago, the owner of an internet provider in Santa Catarina, with revenue of R$ 280 thousand a month, came to Vispe with two questions: what is my company worth? And is it possible to exit?

The operation was healthy. The diagnosis, however, showed that healthy is not the same as sellable.

The challenge

The first problem was dependence on the founder. He was the main commercial and operational engine, and without him in day-to-day decisions the business lost momentum. For an investor, that's a binary risk: if the owner leaves or has a health problem, the business may stop. In the first market soundings, that dependence weighed on the price, and the estimated valuation was R$ 3 million.

There were other issues. The cost structure wasn't optimized and working capital was a constant bottleneck: the company was living hand to mouth. There was no growth thesis, and no spare capital to invest in technology or expansion. The customer base mixed different profiles, which made it hard to price each part of the business and made the operation heavy.

The founder himself felt the limit. The day had 24 hours, and he was already at his physical and mental limit. Every new customer was a source of stress, not celebration. In short, he owned excellent work, but he didn't yet own an asset ready for the M&A market.

The trigger came from the sector: new players and market consolidation showed that the business needed scale or a professional structure, and soon, while the asset was still attractive.

How Vispe worked

The decision was not to sell the company as it was. The work followed a value-engineering strategy in three moves.

The first was a partial sale. The analysis showed that 20% of customers took up 80% of support time and had very low margins. That portfolio was sold separately, in a niche M&A deal. The company became smaller in gross revenue, but much more profitable in percentage terms. And professional buyers pay higher multiples for higher margins.

The second was taking the founder out of the center of the operation, creating a layer of management and processes so the company could run without his direct involvement.

The third was going to market. With the house in order, cash reinforced by the partial sale and the operation running without the owner, Vispe didn't go out to ask for an offer: it went out to present a premium asset.

None of this was simple. The biggest obstacle was the founder letting go, after years of centralizing decisions, and handing control to a team and to processes. And selling part of the portfolio while the main operation kept running was like changing a tire on a moving car.

The results

  • Initial valuation: R$ 3 million.
  • Sale value, two years later: R$ 4.8 million.
  • Increase: R$ 1.8 million, or 60% in 24 months.

The founder got his time back and stopped being the firefighter of daily crises. In the negotiation, he went from needing to sell to owning a sought-after asset. And with documented processes, the buyer's due diligence brought no last-minute discounts.

What changed

Before, it was a company centered on one person, with cash flow squeezed by low-margin customers and a valuation with a heavy risk discount. Afterwards, an off-the-shelf asset: a lean operation with predictable cash generation, running autonomously through processes and leaders. The founder turned years of effort into capital available for new projects.