selection.
Aegryn is a Swiss tech asset company built on one conviction: exceptional digital assets deserve exceptional transactions. We don't believe in luck. We believe in preparation, certification, and the quiet power of a process done properly.
Aegryn Magazine is our commitment to publishing what the market refuses to say clearly — in a format that respects the intelligence of those who build things worth selling.
evidence.
Every asset we certify is scored against the CIFS Protocol, a proprietary index built from over forty structural signals: founder dependency, revenue quality, IP ownership, documentation depth, and technical architecture.
The score is not a marketing number. It is the same framework institutional buyers apply internally, run before a buyer ever opens the data room.
Not because the assets weren’t real. Not because the technology wasn’t solid. Because no one prepared them to transact.
We built Aegryn to refuse that outcome. We refuse to let a serious company disappear into a poorly structured process. We refuse to let a founder walk away with 60 cents on the dollar because their data room was three PDFs and a prayer.
This magazine exists because the information gap between European founders and institutional acquirers is still enormous.
Issue 01 is “Built to Last.” It covers what makes an asset worth acquiring before any conversation starts — the structural decisions, the certification logic, the real market data, and the human reality of building something a serious buyer will pay full price for.
We publish quarterly. We take no advertising. We are funded by the quality of the transactions we facilitate. That alignment is intentional. It is permanent.
The Draghi Report estimated a €800 billion annual investment gap between Europe and the US. The preparation gap — the delta between what European tech assets are worth and what they transact for — is driven almost entirely by avoidable, correctable deficiencies.
The CIFS Protocol exists to measure them. This magazine exists to explain why they matter.
Not just to exist.
There are two kinds of tech companies: those built to operate, and those built to transact. The distinction is not visible from the outside. It is entirely in the choices made before revenue was meaningful.
The companies that transact well are almost always the ones where the founder imposed a standard on the operation early: clean books, owned IP, documented architecture, transferable client relationships.
The companies that transact poorly are the ones where none of those choices were made deliberately — and where the cost of that informality materialises, in full, during the 14 weeks of due diligence.
Most founders estimate their valuation by applying a multiple to their ARR. That number is the ceiling, not the floor. Between the number in a founder’s head and the number in a signed LOI lie four systematic adjustments that every serious buyer applies — without exception.
None of these adjustments require exotic financial modelling. All of them are based on observable, correctable characteristics of the asset.
That Change Your Number.
You say €400K ARR. The buyer needs to know what kind. Declarative (your word) trades at 3.8x. Verifiable (confirmable in 48h) at 5.2x. Audited (documented, airtight) at 7.1x. Same revenue. Three valuations.
Every point on the F-42 scale costs 8–12% of final price. A score of 4/5 — founder is primary relationship for every major client — pays a "founder tax" of 32–48% on valuation.
Next.js, TypeScript, documented APIs, unit tests >60%: zero penalty. PHP 7.x legacy without test coverage: −15 to −25% on final price and six additional weeks of due diligence.
Defensible AI architecture — proprietary data, custom fine-tuning, documented strategy — adds 20–40%. Undocumented dependency on third-party LLM subtracts 15%. "AI-powered" is now table stakes.
Window.
The single most important finding from Aegryn's certification activity: founders who begin preparation 18+ months before a transaction close significantly better than those who start during the process. Due diligence is not a preparation phase — it is an examination phase.
The founder who built 70% of his product with Cursor in six months is not stupid. He is rational. The economics of AI-assisted development are compelling. The problem is not the tooling. The problem is what the tooling leaves behind when the technical auditor opens the repository.
The auditor is not impressed by speed. The auditor is counting: test coverage percentage, documentation density, dependency freshness, presence of deprecated API calls, and evidence of intentional architecture decisions. Code that was generated without human review of each decision leaves a specific fingerprint — and technical auditors in 2026 know exactly what it looks like.
This is not an argument against Cursor, Windsurf, or any AI coding tool. It is an argument for applying a documentation and review standard to every piece of code that enters a production codebase — regardless of how it was generated.
Human-reviewed, tested, documented AI-assisted code is indistinguishable from human-written code in due diligence. Unreviewed vibe output is not.
Not every technology choice is equal in due diligence. These are the stack signals that accelerate or delay a transaction — and the premium or penalty they carry.
| Technology choice | Signal to buyer | Impact |
|---|---|---|
| Next.js 14+ / TypeScript | Modern, auditable, portable | +Premium |
| Supabase / Postgres | Open, documented, portable | Neutral+ |
| Unit tests >60% | Auditor confidence, maturity | +Premium |
| CI/CD with documented pipeline | Process maturity | Neutral |
| Documented API contracts | Integration clarity | Neutral+ |
| PHP 7.x legacy | Maintenance burden | −15% |
| Undocumented proprietary APIs | Integration risk | −10% |
| Zero test coverage | Deployment risk | −20% |
| Deprecated dependencies | Security liability | −25% |
| Vibe-coded core logic | Due diligence uncertainty | −25% |
When a buyer's team opens a data room, there is a consistent sequence. Founders who have these seven documents ready, clean, and current signal one thing before a word of negotiation: this person runs a tight operation.
The headline numbers mask a structural shift that matters far more than the volume total. The spread between top-tier and bottom-tier private SaaS valuations has never been wider. Businesses with strong NRR, a clear path to profitability, and a credible AI positioning attract premium valuations. The rest face systematic downward repricing.
The SaaS Capital Index peaked at 16.9x ARR in 2021. It entered 2025 at roughly 7x, then fell to a decade-plus low near 3.2x by mid-2026. It has since recovered modestly to approximately 3.8x ARR as of late July 2026 (SaaS Capital Index). The recovery is selective: identity, security, and vertical SaaS are leading. AI-exposed horizontal SaaS is lagging.
| Vertical | EU Range | Premium condition | EU Peak |
|---|---|---|---|
| AI-native SaaS | 6–12x | Proprietary data + architecture | 15x+ |
| Vertical SaaS | 5–9x | NRR >110%, sticky contracts | 12x |
| Cybersecurity | 6–14x | Platform density, AI layer | 45x |
| RegTech / LegalTech | 6–12x | DORA/AI Act compliance certified | 12x |
| FinTech / Payments | 4–6x | Transaction volume moat | 8x |
| HealthTech | 4–8x | Regulatory moat, ARR quality | 10x |
| EdTech / Compliance | 3–6x | Enterprise contracts, NRR | 8x |
| Marketplace | 2–5x | Take rate, GMV defensibility | 7x |
| PropTech | 2–4x | Recurring revenue, data edge | 6x |
| Horizontal SaaS | 3–4x | AI substitution risk — declining | 5x |
Three patterns emerge from this data that are not visible in the headlines. First, AI-adjacent verticals — RegTech, Cybersecurity, AI-native SaaS — have widened their premium gap over horizontal SaaS significantly since 2024. The bifurcation is structural, not cyclical.
Second, the compliance dividend is now a measurable factor in FinTech and LegalTech multiples. Assets that are demonstrably DORA or EU AI Act compliant command 1.5–2x the multiple of equivalent non-compliant assets when EU buyers are in the process. This gap will widen as the AI Act enforcement ramps through 2027.
Third, generic horizontal SaaS is under persistent compression that is not cyclical but structural. AI substitution risk is repricing the category at the buyer level, and no amount of ARR growth is reversing it for undifferentiated products.
Raising.
Start
Building
to Sell.
This is not an anti-ambition argument. Building something worth €50M requires a genuinely different playbook than building something worth €2M. The point is to know, honestly, which you are building — and to stop applying the wrong playbook to the wrong goal.
The VC multiple required for Scenario A to outperform Scenario B is 5x. How many EU VC funds returned 5x on vintages 2018–2022? Fewer than 12%, per European Investment Fund (EIF) data. That is not an argument against venture capital. It is an argument for knowing which game you are actually playing.
The founders who capture the best outcomes are not the ones who time the market perfectly. They are the ones who are ready when the window opens. Preparation is entirely on the seller's clock. Not the buyer's, not the market's. Yours.
The EU exit ecosystem is mature enough in 2027 to absorb well-prepared assets across all verticals. The question is not whether a serious EU tech asset will find a buyer. It is whether it arrives at the table ready to be found — or whether due diligence finds the problems first.
One Clear Outcome.
You give up 20% equity. Your implicit target: 10x return in 5 years = €40M exit. Probability of achieving that: <5% (European Investment Fund, EIF — European Venture Capital Report 2025). At a €5M exit — far more common — your net: approximately €4M. You have spent five years chasing a probability that did not materialise.
No dilution. Reach €400K ARR in 30 months. CIFS certification at Pre-Grade. Transaction at 5x ARR = €2M. Keep 100% of it. Spend 8 months on transition. Then build again — with more capital, more experience, and a certified track record as a seller.
Defined H1 2026.
Not the press releases. The signals. Each transaction below reveals something specific about who is buying, what they pay premium for, what triggers a walk, and what a CIFS grade would have indicated. The grades shown are analytical estimates — not official certifications.
This index does not name certified assets. Updated each edition.
Nearly half of all technology deals in 2025 carried an AI component. But "AI-powered" is no longer a premium signal — it is a baseline expectation. The premium now goes to something specific: a defensible AI architecture that cannot be easily replicated.
When a buyer's technical team evaluates an AI-enabled asset, they are performing one test: is the AI defensible, or substitutable? A feature AI — a ChatGPT wrapper, a standard RAG implementation over public data — is substitutable. A competitor can replicate it in 90 days. A buyer pays no premium for something replaceable.
An architecture AI — proprietary training data with documented rights, custom fine-tuning, a tested model strategy, EU AI Act compliance — is defensible. A competitor cannot replicate it in 90 days because the data doesn't exist elsewhere, the fine-tuning took 18 months of customer feedback, and the compliance framework required a legal and technical investment that most competitors haven't made.
The premiums above apply at the margin — they compound with base valuation. An AI-native SaaS trading at 6x ARR with all five architecture elements present can realistically negotiate toward 9–10x in a competitive process. The elements are correctable. The documentation is achievable. The timeline is 12–18 months with intentional effort.
Founders who arrive with a complete AI architecture brief close AI due diligence 60% faster than those who reconstruct it on request. The document is not a technical specification — it is a narrative that answers the seven questions every sophisticated buyer now asks as standard.
Who Built
to Sell.
He built the first version alone, over a weekend, to solve a problem he had watched his previous employer pay €40,000 a year to solve badly. He did not think about exits for the first four years. He thought about making the software do the thing properly.
By year five, he had €2.4M in ARR, seven employees, and a waiting list. He also had a cap table that was entirely clean — no convertible notes, no SAFEs, no informal equity promises to early contractors.
His bookkeeper closed the monthly accounts within 48 hours of month-end, every month, for six years. None of this was strategic preparation for a sale. It was simply how he ran things.
The process ran fourteen weeks — half the EU market average. Three buyers expressed interest; two submitted serious offers. He accepted the second — a PE fund with a portfolio of complementary vertical SaaS tools — at 6.4x ARR. He stayed on for eight months as a consultant. Then he started building again.
He is now eighteen months into his second company. He started the documentation on day one this time.
to Watch.
Builders to Watch.
They are not famous yet. They build quietly, document obsessively, and understand exactly what they are building toward. Each of them has already started preparing the exit they haven't announced.
What connects them is not the sector or the city. It is the posture: founders who run their company as if an acquirer is watching from day one.
The conversation about where European tech founders should base their operations has been dominated by the usual cities. Switzerland appears occasionally, usually as a punchline about banking and skiing. That is changing quietly but visibly.
What Lausanne, Zurich, and Geneva offer the founder in build-to-exit mode is specific and undervalued — fiduciaires who understand SaaS revenue models, lawyers who have seen hundreds of tech M&A transactions, notaries who can close an SA conversion in three weeks.
The 40-minute train between Lausanne and Geneva gives access to two distinct networks: EPFL talent from Lausanne; international banking and family office capital from Geneva.
Equation.
Issue 02 is about the transaction itself — the decision, the preparation, the negotiation, and the twelve months that follow. The number that changes your life, and whether it was the right one.
Aegryn Magazine is published quarterly. Digital access is free — permanently. Funded by the quality of the transactions we facilitate.
