# Marcus Delano, Owner at Delano Comfort Systems — read of Exit AI, May 7, 2026

> 14 years in the trades, 7 running my own HVAC shop in suburban Columbus, $3.2M revenue, 18 techs on payroll, coaching my son's 11U baseball team Saturdays, and quietly trying to figure out what this business is actually worth before I'm 50.

## How I got here

I've been googling "how much is my HVAC business worth" in different variations for three months. Found this somewhere mid-page in Google results, probably page two, after clicking past three broker sites that wanted my email before they'd tell me anything useful. No LinkedIn ad, no podcast. Just scrolling at 11pm after my kids went to bed and my accountant's latest note was still bugging me.

## What I clicked first

The hero line: "We help you sell it for what it is actually worth." That phrase got me because I have gotten three completely different answers to that question in the last year. One broker said 3x EBITDA. My accountant said 4-5x. A guy at a trade dinner said 6x was realistic "in this environment." I don't know who's right. So that line landed.

The "Try it Live result" button was the first thing I actually clicked. That's the correct instinct: show me the product before you ask me for anything.

## Where I paused

The Multiple Optimizer section. "See exactly which levers move your EBITDA multiple before you engage a broker" is the only thing on this page that felt genuinely useful rather than just reassuring. The specific example of "reducing owner hours" hit close to home because I work 55 hours a week in this business and I know that's a problem for a buyer. Seeing that modeled out with actual valuation impact numbers would mean something to me. I stayed on that section longer than everywhere else combined.

## What I distrusted

"12-dimension analysis" sounds like a number someone chose to sound thorough. Why 12? The page lists five dimensions (financials, recurring revenue, owner dependency, customer concentration, operational systems) and stops. That's five, not twelve. The gap between the claim and what's shown made me suspicious about how much substance is underneath all of this.

Also: "formatted the way sophisticated buyers expect to receive them." Who validated that claim? A real PE firm or strategic buyer reviewed these outputs? A broker used one in an actual deal? Or did someone read a book on M&A and build a template? There's no way to tell from the page.

And the footer says "Built by Wishdeal Studio." I don't know that name. Not from M&A circles, not from software I've used. That's not inherently disqualifying but it raises the question of whether this is a focused product or a studio experiment that might get deprioritized six months from now.

## What would convince me

One real exit story. Not a star rating. An actual narrative: business type, revenue range, what the sellability score was when they started, what they fixed over what timeframe, and what they sold for. Anonymized with something like "a Midwest service business doing $2.5M" would be enough. That would tell me whether this is useful for a business like mine specifically.

I also need to know what happens to the CIM after it's generated. Does a human review it? Does a broker who knows my sector look at it before I send it to anyone? Or is it purely automated output that I take to market on my own? That difference is significant.

## What I'd ask in an email reply

1. Has any CIM this tool generated been used in a transaction that actually closed? Not started, not submitted, closed. If yes, what was the sector and the rough sale price range?

2. The broker matchmaking: who are the vetted M&A advisors and how were they vetted? Are they paying to be listed, or did you independently qualify them based on deal history?

3. My revenue is roughly 70% residential service agreements and 30% project work. Does the multiple model distinguish between those two, or does it treat all revenue as equivalent?

## Verdict: on-the-fence

The product concept is legitimate and the problem it targets is real. But nothing on the page proves it works. No actual exits, no named advisors, no breakdown of those 12 dimensions, no proof that a sophisticated buyer has ever received one of these documents and taken it seriously. "Wishdeal Studio" means nothing to me as a signal of credibility in M&A. I would not initiate a demo based on this page alone, but I would reply if someone I trusted forwarded it with a note saying they'd used it.

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*Memo by skeptic persona, generated 2026-05-07. Studio breaks own self-grading loop.*