How to run your Pre-LOI Investment Analysis in 1 hour
December 30, 2025
by a professional from IESE Business School in Amsterdam, Netherlands
Pre-LOI investment analysis typically takes 5 to 10 hours spread over 2 to 3 days. In this article, we'll demonstrate how you can run this in less than 1 hour while deepening your analysis and generating more insights to increase upside, mitigate risks, optimize your deal structure and negotiate better.
Executive Summary
You can complete your Pre-LOI Investment Analysis within 1 hour by reducing your "Build Time" and "Analysis Time" by 90%:
Build Time: use our Pre-LOI Search Fund LBO which covers 90% of what you'll need for a Pre-LOI deal review (see download link at end of post)
Analysis Time: use the Fontics Excel plug-in which cuts investment analysis in Excel by 90% (read along for applications specific to Search Funds)
We break down the indicative time split for to complete your review within 1 hour
[30 mins]: Extract key deal terms
[10 mins]: Update Pre-LOI LBO
[5 mins]: Identify main drivers
[5 mins]: Run scenarios
[5 mins]: Optimize deal structure
[5 mins]: Get indicative deal direction [i.e. to proceed or not]
Note: this article assumes some basic understanding of Finance and Excel
Read the full piece here https://www.linkedin.com/posts/fontics_how-to-run-your-search-fund-pre-loi-investment-activity-7411740634446786560-xy6l
(includes the link to the Pre-LOI LBO model and 6 screenshots) 

from University of Southern California in North Palm Beach, FL, USA