The Situation

Gantry had built a population health analytics platform for health systems and ACOs. They'd raised $18M in venture funding and grown to 47 employees, but revenue had plateaued at $6.5M and they were burning $250K per month. They had twelve months of runway left.

The CEO was facing a hard choice: raise a bridge round at a down valuation, implement layoffs and try to get to profitability, or find a buyer. The board was divided. Investors were losing confidence.

They hired us to assess the options and help them make the call.

What We Found

The business had two problems: a unit economics problem and a positioning problem.

Unit economics were broken. Customer acquisition cost was $340K. Average contract value was $210K annually. Average customer lifetime was 2.8 years. That meant they were losing money on every customer and trying to make it up in volume. Unless they fundamentally changed the model, the business wasn't viable.

Positioning was off. Gantry was selling to health systems as an analytics tool, which put them in a crowded market competing on features and price. But when we talked to their best customers, they described Gantry differently—as a solution that helped them avoid Medicare penalties by improving care coordination. That was a different value proposition with different economics.

The business wasn't dead. But it needed to change fast.

What We Did

We restructured the business and positioned it for acquisition:

Shifted to a compliance and risk-avoidance positioning. We stopped selling analytics and started selling penalty avoidance. This allowed us to price based on the financial risk we were mitigating (penalties averaging $1.2M annually for target customers) rather than the cost of the software. We repriced the product from $210K to $480K annually.

Focused on a narrow segment. We exited smaller health systems and ACOs and focused exclusively on large integrated delivery networks with 5+ hospitals. This reduced the addressable market but dramatically improved conversion rates and contract values.

Cut burn and extended runway. We reduced headcount from 47 to 29, cutting roles that weren't directly tied to revenue or product development. Burn dropped from $250K/month to $110K/month, extending runway from twelve months to twenty-four.

Prepared for sale. Once the business was stabilized and repositioned, we ran a structured sell-side process. We identified twelve strategic acquirers who were building population health platforms and needed Gantry's capabilities to compete for value-based care contracts.

The Result

Gantry was acquired by a large health IT company fourteen months after our engagement for $43M—a 2.4x return for investors who'd written the company off six months earlier.

The new positioning drove the valuation. The acquirer wasn't buying an analytics tool. They were buying a compliance solution that let them sell into value-based care contracts worth $15M+ annually.

The CEO told us later that the decision to narrow focus and reprice was terrifying—it felt like shrinking the business at the worst possible time. But it was the only path to an outcome that didn't end in liquidation.