Payment is on acceptance.
No invoice if the pack doesn’t change a decision you were about to make. It is a flat fee with zero success component, and it only becomes payable when the read has actually moved your decision, including when the honest answer is don’t pursue this one.
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The structure that makes it possible.
Every other advisor in the room is paid at closing, or paid more when the number is bigger. That fee incentive quietly prefers one answer. Our fee is flat, fully disclosed, and carries no success component, so there is no version of the work where we earn more by telling you to proceed.
Payment on acceptance is what that neutrality looks like once it reaches the invoice. If the read has no effect on what you were going to do, it has not earned its fee, and there is nothing to pay.
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What “changes your decision” actually means.
It does not mean we told you to buy. A verdict that stops a pursuit has changed your decision as surely as one that confirms it — often more. A PARK that keeps you off a target you were about to chase, a don’t pursue this one that spends a week of evidence instead of a quarter of your capital: that is the read doing its job.
The only outcome that fails the test is a pack you read, set down, and act exactly as you would have without it. That one is on us.
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Why the objection it forecloses matters.
The usual worry about a truth-biased read is the fear of paying full freight for an answer you didn’t want: a “no” that feels like money spent on bad news. Payment on acceptance removes exactly that hesitation in the same breath the offer is made: you are not buying a conclusion you’ll like, you are buying a decision that moves. If it doesn’t move, you don’t pay for it.
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Where it applies.
Payment on acceptance is the standing term on fixed-scope, deal-stage work: the Independent Sponsor and Self-Funded Searcher evidence packs, and the Revenue Intelligence verdicts. These are bounded engagements with a scope set before the work begins, which is what lets the exposure sit with us rather than with you.
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The one boundary.
It does not extend to board-level custom engagements. Those carry a different term: a fee fixed in the engagement letter before the verdict, which does not vary with the conclusion. On an open-ended, scope-set mandate the exposure is potentially uncapped, and a fixed-fee-before-verdict structure protects the same neutrality without the open risk. The distinction is written into the engagement letter so it is never improvised in a conversation.
You are not paying for a conclusion you’ll enjoy. You are paying for one that changes what you do next. If it doesn’t, there’s no invoice — and that is the whole point.