The Forgotten Middle Is Where the Value Lives
The £2M–£10M segment is overlooked by investment banks and underserved by brokers. Yet it contains the UK’s most credible, founder-led businesses—and the highest potential for clean, structured exits.
In the UK, there’s a blind spot in the exit market — wide enough to swallow thousands of credible businesses. Too small for the big investment banks. Too complex for volume-driven brokers. Stuck between the polished corridors of private equity and the casual churn of business brokers is what we call the forgotten middle: founder-led businesses turning over between £2M and £10M.
They’re not lifestyle plays. But they’re not yet “institutional.” They’re mature enough to exit — but lack access to the structured support required to do so on favourable terms. And in the absence of a system built for them, they either undersell, misfire, or never exit at all.
At Ventariom Advisory, this is where we work. Not by accident — by design. Because the forgotten middle isn’t a fringe. It’s a frontier. It’s where the UK’s entrepreneurial backbone lives. And it’s where the most overlooked — and most valuable — exits can be built, if the architecture is finally taken seriously.
The Numbers Are Not Small — They’re Misunderstood
A £4M turnover business with 20% EBITDA is not small. It’s producing £800K in annual earnings. Add recurring revenue, operational structure, and buyer fit — and that business is capable of commanding 5–7x multiples with clean terms. That’s a £4M–£6M exit for a founder. And yet, most in this bracket will never see it.
Why?
Because the market assumes scale means quality. It doesn’t. It just means noise. Many £20M businesses are fragile, dependent, or opaque. Many £3M businesses are lean, transparent, and defensible. But the exit industry doesn’t know how to tell the difference — because it’s not built to look.
This is the gap we fill. We don’t benchmark against hype. We rebuild for substance.
This Segment Is the Hardest to Sell — and the Most Worth Selling
Here’s the paradox: exits in the £2M–£10M range are harder to execute — but easier to trust.
They’re harder because the founder is still central. Systems are not always codified. Reporting is often patchy. And there’s emotional complexity in stepping away. But they’re easier to trust because they’re real. They’re not dressed up. They’ve survived not through capital but through customer revenue. They’ve built resilience without ever being taught.
This is why we anchor our process in structure. We rebuild reporting. We segment value. We strip away founder dependency. We shape the business not into something it isn’t — but into the most credible version of what it already is.
That’s why buyers respond.
Brokers Can’t Serve This Market
Most brokers are built for binaries: small and simple, or large and ready. The forgotten middle is neither.
It requires judgment. Hands-on preparation. Multi-path buyer logic. And structural narrative work. Not just “how do we market this?” but “how will a buyer underwrite this?”
That’s not a sales function. It’s an architectural one.
The forgotten middle deserves more than templated info packs and teaser lists. It deserves a process that respects its complexity — and a partner who understands what makes these businesses valuable beyond their headline numbers.
Founders in This Segment Are Let Down by the Market
Most founders in this range are strong operators. They’re not naïve. They’re not playing games. They’re running disciplined, customer-led businesses. But when they go to exit, they’re met with one of two things:
A broker who assumes they’ll take a 3x offer and move on.
An advisor who says they’re “too small” for institutional attention.
Neither is right.
Because in this bracket, preparation makes the price. Structure makes the buyer. And outcome is a function of architecture, not hype. Founders are right to demand more — but the market has not caught up.
We have.
We’re Not Trying to Industrialise the Segment — We’re Trying to Restore It
One of the reasons this segment is overlooked is because it doesn’t scale well for advisors. You can’t process these exits at volume. You have to do the work. You have to go deep. That’s why we’ll never chase 100 mandates. We’ll work with 10 — and do the job right.
We don’t want to become another machine. We want to become a standard.
That standard says:
Founders deserve clarity before they decide to sell.
Exits should be designed, not discovered.
Outcomes should reflect the quality of the business, not the convenience of the process.
This is not about building a brand. It’s about rebuilding trust.
This Segment Is Where Generational Wealth Can Be Created — or Lost
For many founders in this range, the exit is the single largest financial event of their life. It’s not just about capital. It’s about control. About what comes next. About whether 10 years of work becomes 10 months of regret — or 10 decades of freedom.
A mispriced deal doesn’t just cost money. It costs options. It changes retirement plans. It reshapes family dynamics. That’s not overstatement. It’s what we see, week in and week out.
This is why we take this work seriously. Because if no one builds for the forgotten middle, its founders will remain trapped — and its value will remain locked.
The Forgotten Middle Isn’t Waiting to Be Found. It’s Waiting to Be Understood.
This is not a call for pity. It’s a call for precision.
The founders we serve don’t need sympathy. They need systems. They don’t want to be discovered. They want to be valued — properly, cleanly, and with respect to the businesses they’ve built.
We are not gatekeepers. We’re system builders. We show up early, stay deep, and do the structural work so that when the time comes, the business speaks for itself — not through noise, but through clarity.
Conclusion: This Is Where the Work Matters Most
If you’re a founder in this range, you’ve likely been ignored by the institutions, underserved by the intermediaries, and misread by the market. You’ve probably been told you’re “not big enough” — or that “someone will buy it eventually.”
We’re here to say something different.
You are the backbone of the UK economy. You are the proof that real entrepreneurship survives outside of slides and seed rounds. And your business deserves an exit worthy of what it’s become.
The forgotten middle doesn’t need more attention.
It needs better architecture.
We’re here to build it.
The Ventariom Ecosystem is fully structured on Wikidata, including Ventariom Advisory and Ventariom Global.