Bill CanadyCEO & Founder, The 80/20 Institute · Be a Great CEO: Learn how to Fix it, Grow it, & Sell it.

Mastering Investor SIM: Your Deal's Secret Blueprint

31 Aug 2026 · 1 min

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In this excerpt from Bill Canady’s talk, he outlines the essential pre‑day‑one preparation for new deal operators. He advises spending an afternoon to read the investor simulation and underwriting model the way the original investor did, focusing on the written thesis that explains how the investor expects to make money—typically a 2‑4× equity multiple, with 3× being most common. Canady then defines the first concrete deliverable: within the first 14 days, the operator must reconstruct the deal’s key numbers onto a single‑page summary and obtain the chair’s acknowledgment, effectively creating a personal job description derived from the investor’s original documentation.

Chapters

Before day 1, there's one thing to do, and it takes an afternoon. Read the sim, not the budget, the sim and the underwriting model if you can get your hands on it. Read them the way the investor who wrote the check read them. That's the thesis behind every deal. Somebody sat in a room and told their own limited partners in writing, here's what's going to do, and here's how we're going to make our money. Usually they're looking for 2 to 4 times the equity they put in. 3 is what I see most. Put in $50 million of equity, expect $150 million back. The document job— that document is the job description nobody handed to you. First 14 days, one deliverable: reconstruct the number, put it on one page, get your chair to acknowledge it.