About the contributor
Dena Neek
Technology and AI · Co-founder and CEO, ExBrain
Dena Neek wrote the technology and artificial intelligence material in this book: the recurring sections on what AI has actually changed about how a company is bought and sold, and what it has not.
She is an AI engineer and entrepreneur who has built and sold three technology companies and spent more than a decade working with founders, operators, and private-equity-backed teams through growth and acquisition. She has sat on the seller’s side of a transaction, and she has built the kind of AI systems buyers now use to take one apart. That is why this material sits where it does. She knows what AI can see inside a business, and what it still cannot.
Dena is co-founder and CEO of ExBrain, an AI platform built for the moment every buyer dreads: the founder leaves after close and the business stops working, because everything that made it work was in their head. ExBrain learns how the business actually runs and keeps it running without them. Her latest venture received Judges’ Choice at the 2024 AI Innovation Summit and was selected by the U.S. Department of Commerce as one of twelve startups representing American innovation at CES 2025.
She is the author of AI Native by Design and The Micro Firm. For speaking, writing, or advisory inquiries, visit DenaNeek.com.
“The coming decade will not reward companies that simply ‘use AI.’ It will reward companies designed around it: firms that treat intelligence as a first-class design element and structure work so that human judgment, machine execution, and governance operate as one coherent system.”
Dena Neek, AI Native by Design
What she wrote in this book
Chapter 2 · How Buyers Really Think
That flattering call was a list, not a discovery.
Buyers screen you before the first call; the call is the end of a search, not the start of one.
Chapter 3 · What Drives Value
Buyers now price your AI exposure, and it moves both ways.
How your business uses AI, and how exposed it is to it, now shows up in the multiple.
Chapter 5 · The Sell-Side Quality of Earnings
Your review now has to be as thorough as theirs.
Buyers read every file in full; your own review has to go as deep.
Chapter 7 · Reducing Risk Before Going to Market
Everything gets read now, and the list got longer.
The search is complete now, and the window to fix things quietly is shorter.
Chapter 10 · Building the Right Advisory Team
Two questions to add to every advisor interview.
They show how an advisor will actually run your deal, not what bar they cleared once.
Chapter 12 · Building the Buyer Universe
A narrow list is now a choice, not a limitation.
Every plausible buyer can be found; a short list is a decision you pay for.
Chapter 13 · Crafting the Narrative
An unsupported claim no longer gets argued with. It gets dropped.
Claims without numbers are deleted on the first read.
Chapter 16 · Managing Buyer Q&A
Assume the question already knows the answer.
Every answer is checked against everything you already sent; a contradiction costs more than a hard truth.
Chapter 19 · Final Bids and LOIs
You can look up how this buyer behaves before you hand them exclusivity.
Their record on past deals is searchable. Check it first.
Chapter 21 · Confirmatory Diligence
Two decisions the buyer’s software just changed for you.
How you prepare, and how you respond, now that nothing goes unread.
Chapter 22 · Negotiating the Definitive Agreements
You can find out what the words are worth before you agree to them.
The cost of each term can be estimated before signing, not discovered after.
Chapter 27 · Working Capital
The side with the better analysis sets the peg.
And that work starts a year before anyone asks.
Chapter 30 · Earnouts
Test the target against your own history before you agree to it.
Find out what the fight is worth before you agree to have it.
