I've been asking around about this and wanted to pressure test it with a wider group. Two small manufacturers fell through for me this year for different reasons, but key man risk kept coming up. In one the owner was the sales, quoting, and every customer relationship. Almost none of it was written down. What I've heard so far from people who've closed: One structured 60 days of training with 10% of the price in escrow for a year, plus retention bonuses for the employees, then learned the seller's technical role himself. Another had 60 days available and barely used it. Two long conversations at a diner, two supplier visits, and the rest of the time he was heads down getting things done. His point was that there's so much to do in a transition that sitting around asking questions felt like the worse use of time. A third said the real risk isn't knowledge at all, it's whether the seller is a good person who picks up the phone. And a fourth said the thing was the operational side. Bank accounts, licenses, bill pay, vendor agreements, payroll. Said a dedicated resource would have helped a lot but he could not get comfortable handing someone signatures and bank info. For anyone who's closed: What did you do, and did it hold up? Six months in what did you find out you were missing? Anything catastrophic or messier than presented? Did you pay for outside help with the transition, or was it all deal structure and your own time/effort? What I've been thinking about is whether there's a way to capture how the owner operates during that window without it eating the buyer's time. How he quotes, which customers need what, why he uses the suppliers he uses, judgment calls nobody writes down. Something you could reference when the seller is gone and you hit a situation you've never seen. If that existed, would you have paid for it? And roughly what would it have been worth on your last deal? Trying to figure out if there's a real gap here or if it's just something buyers handle with structure and effort. Genuinely don't know yet.