The method behind the numbers.
For the buyer who verifies before believing. No surveys, no estimates — every grade traces back to official financial filings and a transparent, reproducible model. Here is exactly how it works.
Two numbers, two jobs
We built the model from 10M+ company financials — gathered individually and drawn from official aggregate sources — across 300+ industries and the markets those sources cover. That corpus is how we learned the pattern: across a sector, the top decile of companies earn roughly twice the median’s profit margin.
Separately, when we benchmark you, we compare you against 1.85M+ company-level records from official filings — SEC EDGAR, INPI, Companies House and other national registries — matched to your sector and revenue band. The first taught us the pattern; the second is the peer set you are measured against. The corpus is drawn from official and aggregate sources; it is not a count of individually audited statements.
Company filings come from five markets (France, Norway, the UK, Finland, the US); Canada and the US also contribute sector benchmark tables. All sources are public, openly licensed, and refreshed as new filings land.
Your grade is your position on the curve
We do not compare you to arbitrary thresholds. We compare you to every company in your sector and revenue band, across the 22 KPIs that decide value — then map where you land.
Step 1 — Find your peer cohort
We group companies by sector (NAF / NACE / NAICS) and revenue band ($1–5M, $5–20M, and up). 85 sectors resolve into 549 populated peer cohorts — your cohort might be 2,800 wholesale companies in the $5–20M band. You are scored against them, not a national average.
Step 2 — Compute your Z-score
For each key performance indicator (KPI) we measure how many standard deviations you sit from your cohort’s mean. That single number is comparable across every metric and every sector.
Z = (your value − cohort mean) / cohort std. dev.
Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation & amortization (EBITDA) 14.9%, cohort mean 8.1%, cohort std. dev. 4.2% → Z = +1.62 → grade A
Step 3 — Map onto the curve
Z-scores map straight onto the normal distribution — so grades form a genuine bell curve across the population. A+ is reserved for the top 2.3%; B sits right at the median.
How the overall grade is composed
Your headline grade is a weighted blend of individual key performance indicator (KPI) grades. Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation & amortization (EBITDA) margin and revenue growth carry 45% between them — because profitable growth is what Private Equity investors price.
What the corpus reveals
the earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation & amortization (EBITDA) the top quartile earns versus median peers
of companies clear the Rule of 40 (growth + margin ≥ 40)
of A+ companies hold their A+ grade the next year
of D-rated companies climb to A-tier the next year
“Without intervention, ~97% of underperforming companies stay underperforming. That is why the playbooks matter — and why a grade is a starting line, not a verdict.”
The operating methods, made generic
The grade tells you where the value is. The playbooks are how you release it — the same operating methods the leading Private Equity firms use to create value, distilled into steps your team can run. We describe the methods, never the firms.
Margin expansion
SG&A running at 31% of revenue — an overhead playbook surfaces the addressable savings, often worth $2M+ on a mid-market P&L, without cutting capability.
Working-capital release
Days sales outstanding (DSO) at 58 days against a sector top quartile of 38 — a collections playbook frees roughly $340K of trapped cash and resets the terms that let it build up.
Pricing power
Prices 15% below the sector’s top performers — a pricing playbook with objection scripts recovers the gap your value already justifies.
Exit readiness
A readiness review scores the business against what acquirers underwrite — closing 14 governance gaps can be the difference behind a $2.4M valuation premium.
A system that runs the work
A grade you act on alone is just a report. Playbookly turns the method into motion — your people do the work, the AI guides every step.
Two-week sprints
Every playbook breaks into two-week sprints with clear tasks and a learning objective — no initiative goes dark, progress is measured, not promised.
One dashboard
Predefined Private Equity playbooks and your own strategic projects live on one dashboard — progress, blockers, and impact in a single view.
Your team, AI-guided
Your specialist agents run alongside your people in the flow of work — surfacing the next move, doing the analysis, escalating only the calls that are yours.
Your team levels up as it executes
Every playbook is paired with learning — short modules, worked examples, and your specialist agents coaching in the flow of work. Capability compounds: the second transformation is faster than the first, and it stays in your team, not in a consultant’s deck.
Newcomers
Taught step by step, with worked Private Equity examples.
Practitioners
Pushed with Socratic prompts that build judgement.
Experts
Handed the data, then left to move — no hand-holding.
Your data stays yours
A serious business needs governance before it lets AI near the books. This is the posture, in full — not a footnote.
Isolated and encrypted
One governed system per company — role-based access and a full audit trail, never a shared model pooling confidential P&Ls.
Never trains public models
Your numbers are never used to train public AI models. They work for you, not for the model.
Never benchmarked without consent
Your figures are only ever pooled into anonymised benchmarks with your explicit opt-in — and you can withdraw it.
EU infrastructure
Data is encrypted and EU-resident, built on infrastructure that meets the standard European regulation expects.
See where you stand
Now you know how the grade is built. Get yours in under three minutes — free, no card, no strings.
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