BuildExitReady, an advisory division of 7Mills

About

I had the offer.
I wasn't ready.

In 2021, a buyer came for Parrolabs. The offer wasn't the problem. What I'd built was. By 2024, the company was folded. That experience is what BuildExitReady is built on.

2016 – 2024

In 2021, I received an acquisition offer for Parrolabs — the technology company I had built over the previous decade. I didn't take it.

Not because the offer was wrong. Because when buyers look under the hood, they see things the founder stopped seeing years ago. The financials told a story I couldn't fully control. I was the business: if I stepped out, it wasn't clear it would keep running. No second-tier management. No documented processes. Nothing that made the company legible to someone who hadn't spent ten years inside it.

So the conversation ended. I told myself it wasn't the right moment — that I'd be better positioned next time.

By 2024, the market had shifted. The window that was open in 2021 wasn't open anymore. Parrolabs was folded.

The buyers saw the gaps before I did. That's the part that stays with you.

BuildExitReady is what I built after that. Not a framework from a book. A specific set of things I got wrong — and then spent years learning how to help other founders fix before they needed to sell.

The 7 Mills Framework

Seven dimensions. One complete picture.

The framework is named after the seven mill types that powered the industrial world before mechanisation. Each solved a different problem. Together, they made a complete system. No single dimension determines your multiple — but weak performance in any one of them will be found in due diligence, and will cost you.

  1. Owner Independence

    Can the business run, sell, and grow without you in every room?

  2. Financial Clarity

    Do your numbers tell a clean, defensible story to a buyer's accountant?

  3. Documented Process

    Are your operations legible to someone who has never met you?

  4. Revenue Quality

    Is your revenue recurring, contracted, and concentrated in the right places?

  5. People & Management

    Is there a team that can run the business and retain key people through a sale?

  6. Competitive Value

    Is there something defensible a buyer is actually paying for, beyond goodwill?

  7. Owner Readiness

    Are you — personally — ready for what comes after the sale?

Who we work with

Good businesses.
Structural gaps.

Owner-managed businesses between €2m and €10m revenue, typically planning an exit in 3 to 5 years. Professional services, trade, distribution, specialist manufacturing.

What they have in common: profitable businesses with structural gaps they've had no reason to fix yet. That's exactly when we're most useful — before the gap becomes the buyer's negotiating point.

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Professional services Construction and trade Manufacturing Distribution

Start the conversation.

Whether you're ready to begin a programme or just want to understand what the 7 Mills Score means for your business, we're glad to talk.