Founder Focused.

Investment banking for AI, software, and tech-enabled services companies. Partnering with founders to sell or raise capital. Your success is our singular focus.

Entrepreneurial

Bootstrapping, managing growth, or prepping for an exit? We’ve been there. Many PEAK team members have operated companies themselves.

Dedicated

When we partner with you, we become a part of your team. We’ll channel our grit and determination to ensure we achieve a favorable outcome, together.

Aligned

We’re on your side. We only ever serve sellers, and we structure our incentives to focus on successful outcomes with maximized valuations.

Our Approach

We believe that competition drives results, so we build interest from multiple parties to negotiate your best possible outcome.

Some firms cast a wide net. Others take an entirely custom approach. We believe the solution lies somewhere in the middle. We build a specific pitch for each potential buyer, but we don’t let customization limit our search. We’re constantly finding creative options to achieve your goals.

How We Work

Your AI Story Is Critical to Your Sale.

One in five strategic acquirers walked away from a deal in the past year specifically because of AI disruption risk to the target's business. Not a valuation gap. Not diligence surprises. AI risk. That finding, from Bain's 2026 M&A Practitioners Survey of 303 executives, should reframe how every founder thinks about what it means to be deal-ready.

Buyers aren't asking "do you use AI?" They're asking something harder: could an AI-native competitor replicate your core value proposition in 18 to 24 months? If the answer is yes, or if a founder can't make a confident case for why the answer is no, the deal is carrying a structural liability before the first management presentation. McKinsey's State of AI found that only 6% of organizations qualify as true AI high performers. In diligence, that distinction is the dividing line between a premium signal and a yellow flag.

Founders entering a sale process need two things prepared before the first management presentation: a displacement defense and proof of adoption. Not a roadmap. Feature lists don't survive diligence. Workflow evidence does.

Preparing Your Software Company for an Exit

Building a software business is a pivotal time for any founder, and amid the many factors that arise during that period, a crucial element of your business strategy can be easily overlooked: an exit plan. A well-thought-out exit strategy is essential to realizing the value of your efforts in forming a successful business. Without a clear understanding of how to eventually sell a substantial share–or even the entirety–of your business, the fruits of your labor may never come to fruition.

To help prevent this undesirable outcome, the PEAK team has developed a list of steps to prepare you and your company for an M&A exit. With these steps and a PEAK advisor by your side, you will be the most prepared of all.

Why We Founded PEAK

We followed our moral compasses and built a firm we knew we would believe in, for the long-term. PEAK Co-founders Chad Harding, David Stevenson, and Dave Kirby share how bootstrapping helped them survive in the early days—and relate to their clients, their vision for the future of PEAK, and why team matters most.