Founder
Arjun Kohli
Ex-BlackRock
Narrative under pressure. Leads valuation defense, buyer psychology, and offer choreography.
- Believes price ≠ value; narrative creates the spread
- Turns messy metrics into premium logic
Who we are
We started Sounion because AI-era companies are being priced with last-era heuristics.
We’ve watched great teams get lowballed because buyers anchored to ARR and missed the strategic delta.
On the other side of the table, we saw how narrative, timing, and buyer-fit quietly moved numbers.
Sounion exists to make that leverage explicit—and bankable—for founders.
Why we built this
Act I: Startup-side, we felt the sting—products creating outsized impact, offers pegged to neat multiples.
Act II: Buy-side, we saw how premiums are really justified: roadmap fit, time-to-market, and defensive moats.
Act III: Today, AI-native companies are systematically undervalued. We reframe value with buyer-specific logic, evidence, and psychology—so you take the deal they’re afraid to lose.
Team
Advisory
Zach Kohli
Ex-Neuberger Berman
Portfolio lens; pressure-tests framing so value survives diligence.
- Risk mapping before buyers weaponize diligence
- AI-native moats are underpriced—timing matters
Our thesis
AI-native companies compress time-to-value for acquirers: roadmap acceleration, build-cost avoided, category defense. We quantify that and make it unavoidable in the room.
- Buyer-fit over broad pitch — speak to a specific acquirer’s priorities.
- Evidence over adjectives — data, customers, counterfactuals.
- Psychology matters — frame the regret, not just the upside.
How we work
- Valuation Defense Memo → short, surgical start.
- Strategic Buyer Map → narrow who/why/when.
- Offer Framing Deck → for corp dev (not VCs).
- Optional: AI diligence prep & procurement scans.
Small team, weekly iterations, outcomes over optics.
If you’re being anchored to ARR, call us.
We’ll reframe your value to the buyer that matters—and raise the number on the term sheet.
Start the conversation →