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WAD Capital has transformed its acquisition process by front-loading legal due diligence with Jurimesh, enabling the firm to screen thousands of contracts in hours instead of weeks and identify deal-breaking issues before significant resources are committed.

The €7 Trillion Problem

Over the next decade, approximately €7 trillion of enterprise value in the €1-5M EBITDA range is at risk of disappearing from Europe's economy due to the succession crisis. Thousands of profitable SMEs are closing each year not because of poor performance, but because owners retire without successors.

WAD Capital's mission: "If we can capture a billion of equity out of that 7 trillion at risk over the next 10 years, I'll feel we've done our part in protecting Europe's business sovereignty."

The Due Diligence Challenge

WAD Capital's operator-led model creates unique challenges:

The Economics Don't Scale:

Each CEO-in-residence receives up to €500,000 in search capital
Equity allocation: €1-2M per deal
Traditional due diligence cost: €150,000
The problem: "When you allocate one or two million of equity, it doesn't make sense to spend 150,000 on due diligence. But that's how the market still works."

High Volume, Self-Sourced Deals:

Screening engine monitors 60,000 companies annually
Deals often unadvised (no broker)
Direct conversations with seller-operators
Early access to internal balance sheets
High contract volume relative to ticket size

The Old Problem: Before Jurimesh, legal review happened late in the process. By then, the sunk cost fallacy would kick in—so much effort invested that walking away no longer felt like a real option.

The Goal: "We never want to be in a position where we have to do a deal because of the resources we allocated. We want to be able to walk away earlier, and with confidence."

The Two-Step Solution

WAD Capital redesigned its process around early legal clarity:

Step 1: Internal "Pre-DD" with Jurimesh

Sellers receive clear document request lists
Documents uploaded directly into Jurimesh
Real-time screening and issue flagging
Analysis begins immediately as data room fills
Shapes negotiation strategy while it still matters

Step 2: Confirmatory Due Diligence

External counsel validates structured findings
No need to redo analysis from scratch
Reduced legal costs and timeline

Game-Changing Results

Key Metrics:

4,000+ customer contracts screened in hours instead of weeks
Legal issues surfaced while still negotiating price and structure
Internal pre-DD becomes single source of truth

Real-World Impact: One CEO-in-residence recently identified inconsistent change-of-control language across key customer contracts while valuation was still in negotiation. Instead of discovering post-SPA, he worked with the seller to fix terms early and protect revenue continuity.

"That is the beauty of front-loading diligence. We build the deal together with the seller, not rewrite the agreement the night before signing."

Continuous Improvement Through AI Learning

Each completed diligence cycle teaches the system to ask smarter questions. Examples now embedded in playbooks:

Housing allowances paid off-contract: Flagged early as social security risk
Ambiguous change-of-control clauses: Top-priority review in customer, supplier, and loan agreements
Contract volume management: Recent deal with 4,000+ active customer agreements on just €700K EBITDA—AI reduced months of manual review to hours

"As we do more of these, our document request lists get better. The checks get stronger. We're capturing market knowledge and applying it consistently."

Built to Scale

WAD Capital's Growth Plan:

Support 100 CEOs-in-residence in coming years
Each completing ~3 acquisitions
Result: ~3,000 preserved companies instead of 3,000 closures
Thousands of jobs protected
Entire SME segment professionalized rather than lost

Jurimesh's Role: Enables institutional-grade legal diligence without institutional-grade overhead, giving CEOs the early legal clarity they need to:

Negotiate smartly
Fix risks in time
Walk away when fundamentals aren't right

By front-loading legal due diligence with Jurimesh's AI-powered platform, WAD Capital has solved the economics problem that makes traditional SME acquisitions inefficient. The firm can now execute its mission at scale: building a sustainable answer to Europe's succession crisis, one well-executed deal at a time.

How WAD Capital Uses Jurimesh to Scale Legal Due Diligence for Europe's SME Succession Crisis