A 30-day diagnostic of the business as a system. We surface the failure modes that are about to cascade, rank them by what they'll actually cost, and install the architecture the next stage requires. Built for operators scaling at $300K-$1M/month. Also used by acquirers who want to know whether a target survives the ownership transition before they sign.
Or book a 30-min diagnostic call →We score each domain against a defined rubric, using document review, stakeholder interviews, and the operational data the business actually has. Missing evidence defaults to the lowest score. Operational data outweighs self-report. Ties break downward. The output is a ranked map of where the business will fail first as it grows.
Where the business is going, and whether it can defend the route once it gets there.
Who actually owns what, especially when something goes sideways.
The repeatable mechanics that produce results without heroics.
Cash discipline, close cadence, and the leading indicators you actually look at on Monday.
How customers become customers. Predictably, not by accident.
What's measured. What's visible. What's still invisible because nobody built the report.
What breaks loudly. And what breaks quietly until it doesn't.
Whether the bench can carry the architecture you're about to build.
BAIC's analytical core. Adapted from systems-engineering risk frameworks, VMOCA scores 150+ failure mechanisms across 50+ failure causes, ranked by likelihood and impact. It's how we replace intuition with measurable architecture: exposing fragility, ranking risk, and converting complexity into a prioritized fix sequence.
BAIC is a high-consequence engagement. The buyers are operators with real financial and organizational exposure: people scaling the business they built, or buying one. It's the wrong tool for some stages and some problems, and we'll tell you when it is.
Not a slide deck. A live working system you can run the business from for the next 90 days and beyond.
Spider chart across all eight domains, with a ranked diagnosis on each. Plus the sequence of upgrades that produce the most stability per dollar spent.
A ranked list of failure modes (typically 40+). What breaks first under load. What breaks hardest. What to deliberately defer. Each entry traceable to the evidence that surfaced it.
The execution plan: sequenced, owner-tagged, dependency-aware. Not a wishlist. The installation order for the architecture the diagnosis prescribed.
A live view of your architecture maturity and vulnerability posture as the upgrades land. Quarterly re-scoring keeps everyone clear-eyed about whether the work is sticking.
The 30-day diagnostic, the 90-day execution blueprint, the hosted AMI dashboard, and the first 90 days of governance. Scope scales with company complexity, the number of stakeholders interviewed, and whether LDNA is added to read the leadership bench, we size the engagement together on the diagnostic call.
Representative engagement, anonymized. Consumer goods · ~$190K/month at start.
A fictional engagement ("Northway Co.") so you can see exactly what BAIC produces, then try the live AMI scoring engine yourself.
Click any peeking page (or any tab below) to bring it forward. Representative data throughout.
| Domain | Score | Read | Wt. | Weighted | Signal |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Strategy | 40 | 15% | 6.00 | At risk | |
| Structure / People | 35 | 15% | 5.25 | Override | |
| Systems | 38 | 15% | 5.70 | Override | |
| Financial Control | 42 | 15% | 6.30 | Override | |
| Revenue Engine | 39 | 15% | 5.85 | Override | |
| Data & Dashboards | 28 | 10% | 2.80 | Override | |
| Risk & Compliance | 24 | 5% | 1.20 | Override | |
| Leadership Capacity | 32 | 10% | 3.20 | Override | |
| Total AMI | 36.3 | 100% | 36.30 | 7 active |
| # | Domain | Vulnerability | ID | C | Level | Spr. |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Structure | Leadership is the sole decision-maker · no delegation infrastructure | SP-C01 | 126 | Critical | 1 |
| 2 | Leadership | All investor & vendor relationships concentrated in one person | LC-C01 | 118 | Critical | 1 |
| 3 | Revenue | 87% single-purchase churn · zero retention program | GTM-C01 | 112 | Critical | 1 |
| 4 | Financial | Cash-negative projected within 5 months · no rolling forecast | FC-C01 | 108 | Critical | 1 |
| 5 | Risk | Related-party transaction used as basis for investor SAFEs | RC-C01 | 102 | Critical | 1 |
| 6 | Data | Return rate 25% actual vs. 12% reported · product issues invisible | DD-C02 | 94 | High | 1 |
| 7 | Systems | Negative inventory on 6 SKUs with active EDI partnerships | SYS-C01 | 88 | High | 1 |
| 8 | Financial | AP / balance sheet $84K gap · statements materially misstated | FC-C03 | 82 | High | 1 |
| 9 | Revenue | No CRM · 3,400+ contacts & 7 reps with no pipeline stages | GTM-C02 | 74 | High | 1 |
| 10 | Strategy | Exit-driven strategy substitutes for organizational plan | ST-C01 | 68 | High | 2 |
| Owner | Action | Success metric | Domain |
|---|---|---|---|
Diane ParkCOO | Build 13-week rolling cash forecast with weekly refresh and spending freeze triggers | Forecast live with 3 scenarios; reviewed weekly | Financial |
Diane ParkCOO | Stand up weekly one-page business health dashboard | Dashboard live; delivered to CEO every Monday | Data |
Tom VinsonMarketing | Deploy HubSpot CRM with 5 B2B pipeline stages and territory assignment for 7 reps | CRM active; 3,400+ contacts imported; weekly pipeline review | Revenue |
Carla ReyesLegal & IR | Engage securities counsel; initiate 409A valuation; prepare investor disclosure remediation | Engagement letter signed within 14 days | Risk |
Mark SuttonCEO | Co-sign board resolution for COO authority matrix; review weekly dashboard every Monday | Signed resolution filed; 4 weeks of documented review | Structure |
Tom VinsonMarketing | Launch Klaviyo post-purchase retention sequences (30 / 60 / 90 day) segmented by category | 3 automated sequences live; repeat-rate baseline set | Revenue |
Diane ParkCOO | Physical inventory count with 3PL; resolve negative inventory on 6 SKUs; document 3PL backup | Zero negative-inventory SKUs; backup warehouse identified | Systems |
Representative exampleFictional Northway Co. team. Your own read will differ.
The AMI score, the 8-axis radar, and the Stabilize → Capital-Ready tier badge all recalculate in real time.
Each fix recalculates affected domains, then the AMI total. Watch tier classification flip from Stabilize to Capital-Ready as overrides clear.
The hardest part of architecture isn't the rebuild. It's keeping the architecture intact as complexity rises. That's what the ongoing advisory layer governs.
Your live architecture view stays online. You see what changed, what regressed, and what's at risk, without rebuilding the picture from scratch.
The same eight domains, scored against the same rubric, every quarter. You watch your architecture mature instead of guessing whether it has.
Monthly working sessions with the principal operator. New vulnerabilities surfaced, priority sequence recalibrated, decisions stress-tested against the architecture.
If the diagnosis surfaces leadership-capacity as a constraint, LDNA enters the engagement to diagnose the bench. The two instruments stack.
Search funders, holdcos, and strategics run BAIC on diligence targets in the 30 to 60 days before close. Same 30-day diagnostic, different buyer. The output tells you whether the target survives the ownership transition without the seller, and what to underwrite into the deal terms.
Sixteen questions, free. What to Fix First gives you a directional read of where you're most exposed, and whether the binding constraint is structural, the bench, or something to fix before you scale.
Or book a 30-min diagnostic call →