There are many potential pitfalls and avoidable mistakes when securing investment or preparing for exit, so how can founders avoid the erosion of value and wealth and maximise the right experts at the right time for the best outcome?
On Thursday 4th June, Liberti Club hosted a Forum at The Delta Marriott in Bristol to help scaling business owners in the South West to answer these and related questions, from how to avoid the most costly mistakes to the big decisions that have to be made, and how to make them.
Liberti Club Director Alex Evans set the scene by sharing some stats on growth drivers and M&A trends for UK businesses. “Nearly 45,000 scale up firms contributed £2.19 trillion to the UK economy in 2025, half of total economic output, but access to strategic leadership, talent and finance are the biggest barriers to growth according to the Scale Up Institute,” he explained.
“With the cost of a bad exec hire estimated at four times salary, and 60% of scale up founders looking for board advisors, demand for fractional has exploded over the last year, with 142,000 professional execs describing themselves as fractional on LinkedIn in January last year compared to just over 2,000 in 2022. Preparation for investment and exit is driving demand for fractional leaders across finance, marketing, sales, HR and technology to build the strongest foundations for scale, create value and optimise the right advisors and suppliers.”
In 2025, a total of £24bn was raised in 5,887 equity deals, according to Beauhurst research, and first-time deals grew by 23.6%, with growing interest from foreign acquirers in ‘under-valued’ UK firms. McKinsey reports that the UK’s average EV/EBITDA multiple is 7.7, compared to 13.8 in the US.
Offering advice on how to maximise valuation, BGF investor James Skade, explained that founders need to demonstrate a strong and capable leadership team, a clear understanding of how they would deploy funding, an ambitious but realistic growth plan backed by evidence, and have the financial and operational data needed to be ‘partnership ready’.
“Fractional leaders can form a key part of the management team that an investor is backing, enabling and accurately reporting on quality of earnings, predictable revenue, market opportunity and effective management of risk,” he added.
Simon Glover, Associate Director of sell-side corporate finance specialist Initium observed that two thirds of its deals feature an international acquirer. “The top two foreign buyers from our last 30 deals in terms of country of origin have been from the US and Sweden, with the highest sector demand in Technology, Business Services, Financial Services and TICC (Testing, Inspection, Certification & Compliance),” he explained.
“The biggest risks to successfully completing deals are poor-quality management information, too few people involved in the Due Diligence exercise, and the deal losing momentum,” he added. “This can be mitigated by early preparation on financial reporting, accessing the right leadership capability and building an experienced advisory team to drive the process.”
Tom McLintock, Senior Financial Planner at Amber River Shipman Wealth, rounded off the first session with some advice for maximising wealth from exit. “Be clear on your reason for exiting, the life you want afterwards and the real number you need achieve it so you know the minimum offer you could accept. Unrealistic expectations have cost founders dearly as changing macro factors have reduced valuations and they realise they should have accepted earlier offers.”
Fractional gains
The second session, a panel on creating value and scaling more profitably with partners, opened with an observation on how a fractional CFO has supported scale from Steve Gee, founder & CEO of Blend, a global membership community of cross-functional execs.
“I’ve spent years helping executives from the largest businesses to learn from their biggest mistakes and successes and the lesson I’ve taken is to play to my strengths as a leader and find the right experts for everything else,” he shared. “What Jess offers as a fractional CFO is not just expertise and experience as part of our team, but an independent perspective for more objective advice.
“When my co-founder and I launched the business, we had a very clear vision for our values but also the value we wanted to build. Jess keeps us focused on that strategic goal but is now a real part of our culture.”
Jess Masters, a portfolio finance leader with The CFO Centre, has worked with a range of businesses, including British unicorn Gymshark. Explaining how she supports scaling businesses like Blend, she said: “My role as a fractional CFO is to help with clarity of vision and both the financial and commercial metrics for the growth plan to achieve it. When building the case for investment, accurate reporting and a clear plan for how funding will be deployed is vital, whether it’s spent on people, technology, or other fractional leaders who can support growth.”
Getting your financial house in order early is the best preparation for investment or exit, not just for accurate reporting but a better understanding of what’s driving profitability. “Most founders scale by selling successfully and maintaining growth momentum, but they lose visibility of who their most valuable clients are and those that actually cost them money,” observed Jennifer Raines, founder of YRH Finance Team. “Our team of financial controllers give scaling firms that visibility and accuracy of data to understand where they should be investing for more profitable growth, and building a financial back office that supports, rather than hinders, scaling.”
The panel observed that all founders begin as ‘chief everything officers’ and become ‘enthusiastic amateurs’, particularly in areas like sales and marketing, but this only gets them so far. “The role of fractional CMOs in value creation is to apply market and customer understanding to create a clearly defined and defendable value proposition, plus demonstrate ROI by ensuring that marketing is aligned with business objectives,” said Fiona West, a portfolio CMO for The Marketing Centre. “We also bring an objective view to branding, and how it can be decoupled from founder reliance to enhance equity value.”
Andrew Milbourn, CEO of Kiss The Fish, has seen growing interest from investors in fractional sales leadership to support scale before and after investment – a trend highlighted by BGF Investor Mark Nunny in our Future of Leadership & Growth report. “Growing a sustainable sales team is a challenge for most businesses,” said Nunny. “We therefore see a lot of investment in fractional sales leadership, especially in B2B firms.”
Concluding the panel, Alex posed a final question on how fractional leaders help founders to reassure investors and acquirers about future growth. “A capable leadership team gives confidence, not just to investors, but to the team who will sustain scale,” said Heather Melville, portfolio People Director at People Puzzles. “When founders exit the business, continuity of leadership and seamless succession is important. Fractional leaders support that transition, not just operationally and strategically, but culturally as they are both part of the team and an independent advisor.”
Closing the Forum, Liberti Club Director Alex Evans highlighted the importance of partner ecosystems for growth. “The best preparation for investment, or exit, is to plan early, understand the numbers that matter, and access the right experts at the right time to future-proof decisions.”
Find out more about Liberti Club’s ecosystem of partners and joined-up network of fractional professionals, from strategic and operational finance to sales, marketing and people leaders.