Invisory
Limited
Consultancy & Advisory

A clear view on strategy, M&A and investment.

Strategy · M&A · Investment & Advisory

Invisory Limited is the consultancy practice of Mark Barber, working with owners, management teams and investors on acquisitions, disposals, new markets and changes of direction. Projects are few, and each one is scoped to a single question. Most of my own experience is in ICT and technical services, where I have operated, acquired and exited businesses — so I have made these decisions as well as advised on them.

Start a conversation What we do
£1m–£50m
Client revenue
1–8 weeks
Typical project
Fixed fee
Agreed before work starts
One adviser
Nothing delegated

Who I work with

Owner-managed and private-equity-backed SMEs, typically £1m–£50m of revenue.

This is the size of business where the decisions are large relative to the balance sheet and there is no in-house strategy function to lean on. Below £1m the questions are about survival rather than direction; above £50m there is usually a corporate development team already in place. In between sits a band of companies making consequential choices — whether to sell, what to buy, which market to enter — on management time that is already fully committed.

That is the gap Invisory fills: the analysis and the second opinion a larger business would have in-house, bought for the length of a single question or project, rather than retained permanently.

Most of that work has been in ICT and technical services, sold to business and public sector customers. It is the sector I know from the inside, so I am useful on the detail as well as the structure: what a recurring revenue line is worth, which accreditations gate which customers, and why two businesses with the same profit are not worth the same money.

Services

Grouped by the decision they support. Most engagements use one or two of these.

Transactions
Buy- and sell-side advisory
M&A origination and screening
Commercial due diligence
Information memorandums
Exit scenario modelling
Strategy & markets
Market and competition reports
Investment thesis and value creation
Business plans
Services portfolio consolidation
Go-to-market strategy
Board support
Non-executive director appointments
Management team support

Selected work

Three deliverables from a single buy-and-build project in a B2B technical services sector, prepared for the board and its investor. Client name, sector detail and all figures have been changed; the structure, method and depth are as delivered.

Market sizing
TAM
SAM
SOM
V1 V2 V3 V4 V5 V6
Report · 50 slides

Market & competition analysis

A six-part market study sizing the opportunity from TAM through to a defensible SOM, then testing how winnable it is. The central finding was a two-speed market: broadly flat total spend concealing a specialist layer growing at three times the rate. Structured around market size by vertical and service line, growth, competitive intensity and positioning, routes to market and the qualifications that gate them, consolidation dynamics and the buying population — closing with how customers perceive a PE backed supplier and how that narrative is best managed.

Value bridge
+
=
Platform Bolt-ons Group entryexit
EBITDA build (£m) × exit multiple (×)
Report · 20 slides

Investment thesis

The value-creation case, built on two levers that multiply rather than add: earnings growth through a qualified acquisition pipeline, and multiple expansion from buying sub-scale assets and exiting a scaled, capability-complete group. The work traced the EBITDA bridge acquisition by acquisition, set capability multiples against precedent transactions, and reconciled a capability-weighted multiple to a blended exit figure through scale and revenue-mix adjustments. It closed on hold-period and leverage sensitivities, a public–private mix optimum, the highest-value capability gaps, and a risk register with mitigations.

Scenario toggles
TargetEBITDAMult.EV
3 deals£20m14.3×£293m
5 deals£25m14.4×£363m
8 deals£30m14.4×£435m
Full build£34m14.1×£476m
Model · 5 linked sheets

Exit scenario model

A live workbook sitting under both reports, built so the board could test the plan rather than read a fixed answer. Every acquisition target carries an on/off toggle; switching one changes the consolidated capability map, the revenue split by vertical, the public–private mix, the blended exit multiple, enterprise value and the return sensitivities together. A scenario explorer answers the two questions that matter — the fewest acquisitions to reach a target, and the highest multiple achievable near it — from an exhaustive search across every possible combination of targets, with each figure reconciled to its source and every assumption written down.

A point flagged as unresolved is worth more than a confident one that does not survive the meeting.

Approach

01

Senior throughout

You work with the person who scoped the project, from the first conversation through to the final report. I do not delegate to a team you have never met. That means the question asked in week one is informed by the same judgement that writes the conclusion, and you can pick up the phone to the person who formed it.

02

Scoped to the question

Some decisions need a full diligence exercise with a data room, management interviews and a modelled range of outcomes. Others need a day or two, a week or a month – they all need a straight answer. I size the work to the decision, not to a standard template, so you are not paying for analysis that will never change what you do next.

03

Written to be used

I write for boards and investment committees: the analysis up front, the reasoning behind it laid out plainly, and the evidence where it can be challenged. The aim is a document that holds up to questions in the board room, has clear actionable considerations and still makes sense when it is read again six months later.

04

Where AI fits

AI tools are used for research, for organising large volumes of material, and for building and checking documents and models. They are not used to decide the answer. Every figure traces back to a named source, the conclusions are mine, and I sign off everything before it is sent. Client material is only used under business terms that prevent it training a model.

Background

Mark Barber
Founder & Principal
Mark Barber, Founder and Principal of Invisory Limited

I have spent my career in and around technical services businesses — operating them, growing them and exiting them — and have sat on both the buyer and the seller side of a diligence process.

My career began in mechanical and production engineering, in a role spanning the UK and international markets, before I joined a diversified group formed from my family’s engineering business. There I worked on a range of corporate development projects as part of a buy-and-build strategy.

More recently I worked as a freelance business development consultant to a small private equity house, across several of its portfolio companies, before undertaking a management buy-out of one of those businesses — which I then operated and successfully exited in 2022. Since then, I have worked in a board advisory role, developing and refining a buy-and-build strategy for a group of businesses in which I remain an investor.

Invisory Limited was set up to offer that experience to other business owners and investors. Most of the work is either commercial due diligence and market analysis for an investor, or the same discipline turned inward for an owner deciding whether, when and to whom to sell. I usually work alone but can bring in a range of specialists to support where a project needs them.

Contact

Mark Barber
Founder & Principal
+44 7790 012394
mark@invisory.uk
The Rectory, Longborough
Moreton-in-Marsh, GL56 0QF, UK
Start a conversation
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Notes

Short notes on strategy, transactions and the markets that I work in — plus the occasional side project.

Use the contact form to discuss a particular requirement.

Aug 2026
Side project
10,000 runs
median
ruin line
age 60age 85solvent 87%
Buoyant — web app, events sequenced
A free tool from Invisory

Buoyant: a retirement plan you can be wrong about safely

School fees, a house sale, the start of drawdown, gifting, inheritance tax and an assumed first death, sequenced in the order they actually land — then run ten thousand times. It outgrew the spreadsheet, so it became a small web app called Buoyant: move an event and watch the whole distribution shift. The output is not a number but a percentage — in how many of those futures does the money last — which is of more use than one confident forecast and is easier to sanity-check.

Opens in a new tab · illustrative figures only · the offline copy runs with no internet

Aug 2026
Invisory
Growth by layer
Specialist +14%
Whole market +2%
FY22FY24FY27
Blended average: +5% — true of nobody

The average of two markets is a market nobody sells into

A client’s sector was growing at 5% a year. Underneath that, the commodity half was flat, and the specialist half was compounding at 14% — and every part of the plan that mattered depended on which half you were in. Sizing the subset you actually sell into is duller work than quoting the headline, and it changes the answer more.

Jul 2026
Invisory
Multiple by capability
Spec.
14×
Cloud
11×
Managed
9×
Resale
5×
Same £1m EBITDA, three times the value

Not all earnings are valued equally

A pound of resale EBITDA and a pound of specialist, accredited EBITDA are worth roughly three times different at exit. In a buy-and-build that makes sequencing a valuation decision, not a scheduling one: what you acquire first sets the multiple the rest of the group gets measured on.

Jun 2026
Invisory
Assumption panel
Target CON
Target DOFF
Hold period5 yrs
Exit EV£363m
Recalculates live in the meeting

Build the model so the board can argue with it

Hand a board a single number and they spend the meeting deciding whether to trust you. Hand them a model where they can switch a target off and watch the exit value move, and they spend it deciding what to do. Same analysis, entirely different conversation.

May 2026
Side project
Itinerary — Japan
Tokyo 4n air
Sapporo 3n air
Kyoto 4n rail
Fukuoka 3n rail
18 legs · 7 bases · 3 flights

Three weeks in Japan, planned on one sheet

Eighteen legs, seven bases, six Shinkansen routes and three flights, from Tokyo up to Sapporo and back down through Kyoto, Hiroshima and Fukuoka. Every hotel and train sat in one sheet with its cost, status and a rating, which meant a change on day four could be traced through everything downstream in about a minute. Most of the discipline transfers. The bit that does not: nobody thanks you for a critical path on holiday.

Apr 2026
Side project
Resort scorecard
VillChamMorg
Transfer 1h50 2h05 2h15
Base alt. 1300m 1050m 1350m
Linked km 225 580 580
£/m² 9.4k 11.2k 7.1k
Ranked on criteria set before viewing

Choosing between three Alpine valleys

Villars, Champéry and Morgins, compared on transfer time, base altitude, lift links, running costs and how easily you get your money back out. Writing the criteria down before looking at any particulars was uncomfortable, and it reversed the answer twice. Recommended, in property as much as in deals.

Mar 2026
Side project
Scoring, end on
6
1
1
behindgoalbehind
18 a side · 4 quarters · no offside

Australian Rules, explained in one page

Eighteen players a side on an oval, four quarters, and a scoring system that rewards precision: six points through the middle posts, one if you miss into the outer channel or a defender gets a touch. You can run with the ball but must bounce it every fifteen metres; you can kick or handball but never throw; catch a kick from fifteen metres out and you have earned a free one. There is no offside, so nothing resets and nobody holds a line — the whole ground is live, all game. Tackle between the shoulders and the knees, and only when the man has the ball.

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