I am trying to build an Accountability Chart to make my company attractive to buyers, but because we are lean, several leadership team members have their names in multiple seats. Will private equity buyers reject our structure, and how do we clean this up?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

Private equity buyers will not necessarily reject your business outright, but they will heavily discount your valuation if they see key people holding multiple major seats. To a buyer, this represents massive operational risk and a lack of scalability. They want to buy a business engine, not a group of stressed executives wearing too many hats.

To clean this up, you must first design your Accountability Chart based on the ideal future structure of the business, completely ignoring your current staff. This chart should show the perfect structure needed to run the business at its next stage of growth, with every seat having five distinct roles.

Once the ideal chart is built, place your people in the seats. It is acceptable for names to appear in more than one seat temporarily, but you must create a clear, documented path to vacate those seats.

Use your quarterly planning to prioritize which seats need to be hired out first. Build this hiring roadmap directly into your V/TO. When you present this to potential buyers, they will see that you have a logical, structured plan to transition duties and eliminate human bottlenecks. This structural clarity builds confidence, reduces risk, and protects your enterprise value during the exit process.