We diligence the growth engine behind the numbers. Paid, organic, retention, marketplaces, creators. Then we tell you how much of this revenue is earned, and how much is rented.
Get a free pre-LOI read →Send the CIM and the brand's URL. Five business days. No data access, no cost, no obligation.
How much of the growth rides on uncontracted creators — and walks at close.
Whether the ad account can actually scale to the projections you're underwriting.
Whether the organic traffic in the historicals survives the shift to ChatGPT and AI Overviews.
No junior staff, no offshore team. The person reading the ad account has run one at this scale.
Every one lands in your model: as EBITDA, as multiple, or as a line in the earnout.
If something threatens the thesis, you hear it the same day we find it. Then we keep digging to confirm or clear it.
Consumer brands lose their growth in ways that didn't exist last cycle. These are the five we find most often, and what each one does to price.
We measure what share of revenue rides on creators, affiliates and live commerce, and how much of it walks at close. Creator concentration. Whether the number depends on a handful of relationships with no contracts behind them. Commission economics. Whether there is a content engine here, or four people who happened to post.
Why it moves priceRevenue that depends on uncontracted creators can leave the day you sign. It belongs in an earnout, not in enterprise value.
The best-performing social ads come from assets a brand already has. A salon brand owns a working set. A food product that's satisfying to make at home is a content engine that costs almost nothing to run. We assess whether that potential exists here, and whether the team can actually exploit it.
Why it moves priceUntapped content assets are cheap growth the seller hasn't priced in. A brand without them needs post-close creative spend that belongs in your model now.
Meta's algorithm narrows delivery toward the same users over time. A brand's CPM can hold flat while the cost of reaching a new customer climbs quietly underneath it. With account access post-LOI we measure the CPMr trajectory across Facebook and Instagram and score how saturated the audience actually is.
Why it moves priceAn account that looks efficient but is maxed out on reach cannot deliver the growth you're underwriting.
ChatGPT, Perplexity and AI Overviews are already taking the search traffic sitting in the target's historicals. We assess whether the brand surfaces when a buyer asks, whether that visibility is defensible, and whether a competitor has already taken it.
Why it moves priceIf organic traffic is set to decline, the revenue it drives is worth less than the historicals imply.
We assess how much of the brand's creative can shift to generative production, and how much already has for its competitors. It cuts both ways: a cost line you can take out post-close, or a moat that's eroding while you underwrite it.
Why it moves priceContent costs that can fall are underwritable EBITDA. A moat AI erodes is a risk to price.
Table stakes. Every engagement covers all eight.
Performance, efficiency ceiling, and how much real headroom is left.
Where the site leaks, and what it's worth to fix.
Whether customers come back, and at what margin.
An asset, or borrowed time.
KPIs and channel SWOT against the real market, not the one in the CIM.
Segmentation, demographics, concentration.
Whether the seller's plan is achievable with the engine that exists.
Account health, share risk, channel dependence.
Findings come as a deck built to be read in an IC meeting, not filed after one.
The findings that matter and our read, on one page.
A graded assessment across every area we audited.
Where the growth actually is, ranked.
What could impair the thesis, flagged by severity.
The analysis behind every conclusion, for whoever on your team wants to check it.
The call on whether a growth plan is achievable comes from people who have had to achieve one.
Incremental TikTok Shop revenue added to a stalled, PE-backed haircare brand. A net-new channel, built while hitting the sponsor's EBITDA targets.
Monthly revenue on a plateaued food brand in six months, across Amazon and Shopify. The growth that unlocked its retail expansion.
In managed paid social for 8- and 9-figure consumer brands.
Before you commit to a scope or a fee, we'll tell you what we can already see from the outside.
Send us the CIM, or just the brand's URL. Five business days later you get two written pages: what the outside-in data says about the growth engine, the two or three things we'd want to open up in a full diligence, and whether any of it should change your price.
No account access. No contact with the target's team. No cost, and no obligation to engage us. The pages are yours either way.
And if we don't see anything that should change your read, we'll tell you that too. It happens more often than you'd expect.
Get a free pre-LOI read →Diligence proportionate to the deal, without the Big Four invoice or the Big Four timeline.
A pre-LOI read that strengthens the memo you take to your capital partners, and flags what to negotiate before you commit.
Growth diligence inside exclusivity, and an operator's read that hands straight to the value-creation plan.
The growth workstream your scope doesn't cover. We partner, we don't compete.
There isn't one. It's how we show our work. Some buyers take the two pages and stop there; some ask us to run the full diligence. Either way the pages are yours to keep. We cap it at one per firm per quarter so the ones we do get real attention.
Not for the free read, and not to begin a full diligence. We work outside-in from the CIM, third-party tools, and our own research, and the target's team never needs to know. With data-room or account access post-LOI, the work goes deeper.
Two to three weeks, inside a standard exclusivity window with room to spare. Narrower, single-question scopes move faster. The deadline is agreed before we start.
The same day. If something threatens the thesis you hear it immediately, then we keep digging to confirm or clear it. You'll never learn about a major risk on delivery day.
Diligence is fixed-fee and fixed-scope, agreed upfront. Value-creation engagements are monthly retainers, and we're open to structures that align us with your outcome, including success fees and equity participation.
That's often the best-case finding. We benchmark the brand against competitors' channel mix and quantify the untapped headroom, which becomes the digital chapter of your value-creation plan on day one of ownership.
Send the CIM or the brand's URL. Five business days later, two written pages: what the outside-in data says about the growth engine, what we'd dig into, and whether any of it should change your price.
Prefer email? Reach us at hello@sensusgrowth.com
Five business days · No account access · We keep your information private.
We'll review what you sent and be in touch to confirm your pre-LOI read is underway.