Chapter 69: Two deals one decision

Damian had a rule now.

No getting excited about a company before seeing its numbers.

He’d learned that lesson the hard way with Meridian, and he wasn’t interested in repeating it.

Unfortunately, the Brightpath Systems document had given him just enough information to become curious.

That was almost worse.

He sat at his desk on Wednesday morning, laptop open, with two folders side by side.

MERIDIAN SOFTWARE

BRIGHTPATH SYSTEMS

One was a company he’d spent weeks investigating. The other was a name he’d learned less than twenty-four hours ago.

Neither had made him an offer worth accepting.

His phone rang.

Maya.

"Morning."

"Have you seen the new documents from Michael?"

"Not yet."

"Check your email. They’re incomplete, but there’s enough to move the review forward."

Damian opened his inbox.

Three attachments had arrived overnight.

"Give me a second."

He downloaded them.

The first contained additional financial statements. The second outlined the company’s outstanding liabilities. The third was a revised summary of the intellectual property agreements.

Damian opened the financial statements first.

Revenue was holding steady, but growth had slowed. Operating expenses were higher than he’d expected, partly because of the amount of support required by older customers.

He opened the liabilities document.

Then the third attachment.

"Okay," he said.

Maya waited.

"How bad?"

"I’m still reading."

"Call me when you’ve finished."

She hung up.

Damian spent another twenty minutes going through the documents.

The numbers weren’t disastrous. Meridian still had a customer base, recurring income, and a product businesses relied on.

But the company would need investment after acquisition.

Software modernization.

Better reporting.

Improved integrations.

Additional support capacity.

And now there was the question of Rachel’s rights.

The $2.1 million purchase price was beginning to look like the starting point rather than the total cost.

Damian picked up his phone and called Maya back.

"I’ve gone through everything."

"And?"

"The company might still be worth buying. But not for $2.1 million under the current conditions."

"That’s reasonable."

"I want the attorney’s opinion before we discuss another offer."

"Already requested."

"Good. Also, can we get a realistic estimate for modernizing the software?"

"Yes. The technical review will take longer, though."

"Do it anyway."

Maya agreed to arrange the review.

Before ending the call, Damian asked one more question.

"Have you found anything else concerning Northstar?"

"Nothing new. Victor hasn’t provided additional documents yet."

"Then we keep waiting."

"That’s the plan."

Damian ended the call and closed the Meridian folder.

For the first time in days, he wasn’t tempted to chase the deal forward.

He wanted answers first.

At eleven, Damian met Oliver Grant.

The meeting took place in a small conference room at the advisory firm’s office.

Oliver was in his late thirties, dressed casually in a button-down shirt and dark trousers. He carried a thin folder and a laptop.

He looked more like a tired software developer than someone preparing to sell a company.

"Damian?"

"Oliver?"

They shook hands.

"Thanks for meeting me."

"Of course."

They sat down.

Oliver opened his laptop.

"I’ll be honest. I wasn’t expecting someone your age to contact us about an acquisition."

Damian smiled.

"I get that a lot."

"I hope you don’t mind me asking. How did you get into this?"

"Investing. Then I started looking at businesses I thought I could help grow."

"And software was the natural choice?"

"I’ve spent time around software companies. I understand enough to know what I don’t know."

Oliver laughed.

"That’s probably a better answer than most people give."

They began with the basics.

Brightpath’s software helped small service businesses manage appointments, invoices, customer records, and recurring jobs. It wasn’t designed to compete with large enterprise platforms.

Its appeal was simplicity.

A cleaning company could schedule its staff without building a complicated workflow. A maintenance business could track repeat customers and send invoices without juggling multiple applications.

Oliver had built the original version with two developers. One had since left, while the other worked part-time on maintenance and updates.

"How many active customers do you have?" Damian asked.

"Just over six hundred paying businesses."

"Six hundred?"

"Six hundred and twenty-three at the last count."

"How many have been with you for more than two years?"

"About half."

Damian made a note.

"What about monthly recurring revenue?"

Oliver gave him the current figure.

Damian wrote it down.

"And profitability?"

"We’re profitable. Not by a huge margin, but we’re not burning money to stay alive."

"Any debt?"

"Some outstanding obligations. Nothing unusual for a company our size. You’ll see everything in the financial review if we move forward."

Damian nodded.

"Why sell?"

Oliver leaned back.

For the first time, he seemed uncertain.

"I’ve been doing this for five years. I built the product, found the customers, handled the complaints, and spent most of my time making sure the business kept running."

He rubbed his eyes.

"I don’t hate it. I’m just tired of being responsible for everything."

"Would you stay after the acquisition?"

"For a transition period, certainly. Longer than that would depend on what the new owner wanted."

"And your employees?"

"I’d prefer they stayed."

"How many?"

"Seven, including me."

Damian wrote that down too.

Oliver watched him.

"You’re taking a lot of notes."

"I’ve learned that I’ll forget half of this if I don’t."

"Fair enough."

Damian closed his notebook.

"There’s something I want to understand. You said growth has slowed. Why?"

Oliver considered the question.

"We’ve built a useful product, but we haven’t kept up with everything customers want. Larger competitors have better integrations, more advanced reporting, and more marketing money."

"Can you improve the product?"

"Yes. But doing that while running the company is difficult. I can fix individual problems. Building a proper development roadmap requires more people and more time."

"So the company isn’t failing."

"No."

"You’re running out of room to grow it yourself."

Oliver smiled.

"That’s a fair way to put it."

Damian nodded.

That was the first answer that made Brightpath genuinely interesting.

The company didn’t need to be rescued.

It needed someone who could give it room to develop.

That didn’t mean he should buy it.

But it gave him a reason to investigate further.

After the meeting, Damian returned home and opened his notes.

Brightpath looked promising on the surface.

Six hundred-plus customers.

Recurring revenue.

A profitable business.

A relatively small team.

But he still needed the financial statements, debt schedule, customer retention figures, and a proper technical assessment.

He also wanted to understand how dependent the company was on Oliver.

If the founder left, would the business continue running?

Or would everything fall apart because he was the only person who knew how the software worked?

Damian added the question to his list.

Then his phone buzzed.

Ethan:

Bro where are you?

Damian:

Home. ℯℯ𝑙.

Ethan:

Come out.

Damian:

Why?

Ethan:

Because you’ve been behaving like somebody’s uncle.

Damian laughed.

Damian:

What does that even mean?

Ethan:

You wake up. Check emails. Talk to business people. Check more emails.

Damian:

That’s called working.

Ethan:

You’re in university.

Damian:

I’m aware.

Ethan:

Exactly. Come outside.

Damian looked at his laptop.

He had another hour’s worth of notes to review.

Then he remembered how the previous week had gone.

He’d spent so much time thinking about investments that he’d nearly forgotten to enjoy the money he already had.

Damian:

Give me twenty minutes.

Ethan:

TEN.

Damian:

Fifteen.

Ethan:

Deal.

Damian shook his head.

He saved his work and closed the laptop.

They met at a restaurant near campus.

Ethan was already eating when Damian arrived.

"You ordered without me?"

"You were late."

"I said fifteen minutes."

"You arrived in seventeen."

Damian sat down.

"You’re unbelievable."

"Thank you."

Damian ordered his food.

Ethan watched him for a moment.

"So, how’s business?"

"Complicated."

"Everything with you is complicated."

"That’s because I keep buying complicated things."

"Then stop buying them."

Damian laughed.

"You and Daniel would get along."

"Who’s Daniel?"

"The CEO of Westbridge."

Ethan paused.

"Your business partner?"

"Something like that."

Ethan leaned back.

"Listen to me. I don’t know anything about buying companies, but I know you."

"That’s worrying."

"You get excited about something, then you keep going until you’ve convinced yourself it’s worth it."

Damian frowned.

"That’s not true."

Ethan raised an eyebrow.

Damian considered it.

"Okay, sometimes."

"Exactly."

Ethan took another bite.

"If you buy a company, buy it because the numbers make sense. Not because you’ve already spent three weeks looking at it."

Damian stared at him.

"Why does everybody keep giving me the same advice?"

"Because you don’t listen the first time."

Damian burst out laughing.

"You’re enjoying this."

"Very much."

They continued eating.

For the rest of the evening, they talked about football, an upcoming quiz, and a classmate who had somehow managed to submit the wrong assignment twice.

Damian didn’t check his phone again until he got home.

A new email from Brightpath’s adviser was waiting.

Oliver had agreed to provide preliminary financial records under a confidentiality agreement.

Damian read the message, then glanced at the Meridian folder.

Two companies.

Two different sets of problems.

Meridian had an established customer base and room for improvement, but the intellectual property questions could become expensive.

Brightpath appeared simpler. Its founder wanted out, its product was useful, and its business was profitable.

But Damian knew better than to assume the second opportunity was automatically the better one.

He opened a spreadsheet and created two columns.

Meridian Software.

Brightpath Systems.

Under each, he listed the purchase price, liabilities, customer retention, technical costs, legal risks, and potential growth.

Most of Brightpath’s cells were still blank.

Meridian’s were filling up, but several carried warning notes.

He didn’t need to choose a winner tonight.

He needed to collect enough information to make a sensible decision.

The golden System screen appeared above his desk.

[INVESTMENT OPPORTUNITIES UNDER EVALUATION.]

Damian looked at it.

"Don’t get excited. I haven’t bought anything."

The screen disappeared.

He smiled and returned to his spreadsheet.

For once, he was glad he had more than one option.

He didn’t have to force Meridian to work just because he’d started investigating it first.

And he didn’t have to rush into Brightpath simply because it looked easier.

He could wait.

He could compare.

He could walk away from both.

That was the advantage of having money in the first place.

For the first time since the acquisition search began, Damian closed his laptop without feeling like he was leaving something unfinished.

Tomorrow, he’d look at the numbers.

Tonight, he was done.