Driving Value for Complex Technical, Founder-Owned Businesses
Strategic Financial Advisory + M&A Investment Banking
Audacity IB is an award-winning strategic financial advisory and investment banking firm focused on technically complex, founder-owned businesses.
We work alongside founders from late-stage growth through first-time exits of up to $300 million — bringing the precision, vision, and creativity that define the industries we serve.
About Audacity IB
Strategic Financial Advisory Services + M&A Investment Banking
Audacity is a strategic financial advisory and investment banking firm built for founders of technically complex businesses.
Banking is part of our DNA, but our model extends well beyond a traditional M&A engagement.
We work with a select portfolio of founder-owned companies, often years before an exit, helping build enterprise value, navigate complexity, raise capital, prepare for transactions, and ultimately execute successful first-time exits.
Deep Technical Industries Expertise
We specialize in sectors where founders are often scientists, engineers, physicians, and other domain experts who have built businesses around deep technical expertise and innovation. Our core sectors include Advanced Manufacturing, MedTech, Robotics & Automation, Engineered Products, AI-Enabled Products, and related technical industries.
Proven Growth-to-Exit Expertise
Unlike other banks, we take hands-on operating support ownership inside founder-owned businesses and actually help co-build and exit them at depth. We provide integrated strategic financial advisory, capital raising, and exit M&A advisory services exclusively for founder-led businesses, advising them from scaling their businesses to driving and leading a successful first-time exit.
Client Portfolio (1-5 Year Exits)
In addition to representing clients for the eminent sale of their businesses, we also work with a select portfolio of clients at different stages of growth. We take a long-term value creation approach, often partnering with and supporting founders for years. In select situations, we also invest alongside our clients through equity ownership.
Principal-Led by Design
Audacity is a single-principal practice. Every M&A and capital-raising engagement is personally led and executed by our Principal, supported when appropriate by experienced professionals and specialists selected for the needs of the engagement.
Our model combines senior-level continuity and accountability with the flexibility to bring in specialized expertise where it matters.
Multi-Dimensional Capabilities
Traditional investment banks often engage near the finish line with limited growth and operational capability or involvement, and traditional strategic/financial advisors may lead in one functional area (finance, operations, or growth) but do not necessarily thrive in navigating multi-dimensional growth-to-exit complexity across a company's full life cycle. We do.
Integrated Platform from Growth to Exit
Our investment banking and securities transactions are conducted through our affiliated FINRA-registered broker-dealer, Audacity Capital Partners LLC (Member FINRA/SIPC). This integrated structure provides continuity from strategic advisory through transaction execution. The same principal who has worked alongside a founder, understands the company's intricacies, and helped shape its strategy can ultimately lead the transaction through positioning, negotiation, and closing.
We Don't Just Sell Companies. We Help Build Them.
We roll up our sleeves, drive clarity, accelerate growth, navigate complexity, and stand alongside founders when the stakes are highest.
We Are Unafraid to Tackle Complexity
Audacity IB is a multi-award-winning, principal-led firm built to navigate complex founder situations with the depth, agility, creativity, and intensity they demand. We serve as a founder's creative strategist, growth advisor, business marketer, negotiator, and protector.
Complex Businesses. Complex Stories. Sophisticated Transactions.
The best businesses do not always fit neatly into a standard mold. We excel at understanding technically complex companies, developing compelling investment narratives, and translating their strategic and financial potential into a story the market understands.
Ready to Serve When Buyers Call
Founders often engage Audacity after receiving unsolicited interest from a strategic buyer, private equity firm, or other investor. In these situations, we are brought in to assess the reality vs. potential of the situation. We then work tirelessly and rapidly to build exit optionality, negotiation leverage, higher valuations, and best terms — helping founders make informed decisions while protecting, and often significantly increasing, transaction value and delivering optimal terms.
Sophisticated Buyers. Competitive Processes.
Audacity markets companies to discerning strategic buyers, private equity firms, family offices, and other sophisticated investors. Our experience spans complex private equity and strategic transactions, including highly competitive auction processes designed to create buyer tension and deliver strong outcomes for founders
Founder-Level Intensity
Our model is intentionally selective. We work with a limited portfolio of companies and bring an unusual level of depth and personal involvement to each engagement — from building the business and preparing for a transaction through negotiation and closing.
That intensity is fundamental to Audacity.
Audacity — More Than a Name
Audacity reflects our values and fighting spirit. "Audacity" represents the discipline to do what is right when the stakes are high — to go further, dig deeper, drive greater clarity from complexity, and stand in resolve alongside our selected founders that are doing the hard work of building the future. Proudly standing founder to founder, entrepreneur to entrepreneur.
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Finance, Growth
& Operations
Assignments
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0
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Completed M&A Transactions
($100M Avg. Trx Value)
$ +
Billion Exit Value Delivered
to Founders
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Our Services
One Firm from Growth to Exit.
Audacity is a principal-led strategic financial advisory and investment banking firm serving founders and privately held companies in technically complex industries. Our platform is built around two core capabilities: helping founders build enterprise value and helping them realize that value through capital and M&A transactions.
AUDACITY ADVISORY℠
Strategic Financial Advisory
Audacity Advisory℠ works alongside founders and management teams on the financial and strategic issues that shape enterprise value.
Our work includes financial and operating strategy, business transformation, growth initiatives, transaction readiness, valuation and value creation, strategic alternatives, and other complex financial advisory assignments. Relationships are often long-term. We may begin working with a company years before a potential transaction — helping strengthen the business, mitigate financial and operating risk, evaluate strategic alternatives, prepare for growth, and build toward an eventual liquidity event.
Every Audacity Advisory℠ engagement is personally led by Audacity's Principal, with experienced professionals and specialists involved when their expertise adds value.
AUDACITY IB℠
M&A Investment Banking & Capital Raising
Audacity IB℠ provides award-winning M&A and capital-raising services to founders and privately held companies, with deep expertise in technically complex businesses across Advanced Manufacturing, MedTech, Robotics & Automation, Engineered Products, and related technical sectors.
Every engagement is personally led and executed by Audacity's Principal — from transaction strategy, valuation and positioning through buyer or investor outreach, negotiations, diligence, and closing.
An Audacity IB℠ engagement may represent the culmination of a multi-year Audacity Advisory℠ relationship or begin as a standalone transaction.
Either way, the objective is the same: rigorous preparation, sophisticated execution, and relentless representation of the founder's interests.
AUDACITY ADVISORS℠
Specialized Expertise. Brought in When It Matters.
Audacity Advisors℠ is our network of experienced professionals and specialists, including professionals with whom we have worked directly over many years. Depending on the engagement, we may bring together relevant financial, operational, industry, accounting, transaction, or other specialized expertise.
Audacity Advisors℠ complement — rather than replace — our principal-led model. Audacity's Principal remains directly involved and accountable for the engagement while assembling the right capabilities for the situation.
AUDACITY AI℠
Strategic Financial Advisory & Investment Banking for AI-Enabled Businesses
Audacity AI℠ extends our technical-industry expertise to founder-owned businesses developing and applying artificial intelligence to differentiated products, services, and business models.
We are particularly interested in businesses where AI intersects with complex technologies, physical products, industrial applications, healthcare, automation, and other real-world technical markets.
Through Audacity AI℠, we provide strategic financial advisory services throughout a company's growth and development, as well as capital-raising and M&A investment banking services when founders and shareholders are ready to pursue a transaction.
We also integrate proprietary AI tools into our own strategic advisory and investment banking work to enhance research, analysis, financial insight, and transaction execution.
THE AUDACITY MODEL℠
Selective by Design. Principal-Led by Definition.
Banking is part of our DNA, but our hard work often begins long before a transaction. We take hands-on strategic and financial roles alongside founder-owned businesses, helping build enterprise value and prepare companies for what comes next. Sometimes that journey culminates in an Audacity-led exit. In other situations, we remain alongside the founder while another advisor leads the transaction.
We intentionally work with a select portfolio of companies at any given time. Our relationships can span years, with a long-term focus on value creation and an eventual successful exit.
Across every engagement, the fundamental model remains the same: One principal. A select portfolio. Specialized expertise when needed. Deep involvement from growth through exit.
Representative Testimonials
We Are Unafraid to Tackle Complexity
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Finance, Growth
& Operations
Assignments
0
0
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Completed M&A Transactions
($100M Avg. Trx Value)
0
We drive and protect exit value and care about our client companies as much as our founders do.
Below are representative examples of recent client engagements.
Advanced Design, Manufacturing & Automation | Industrial & Robotics Company
“Audacity IB executed with tireless commitment and energy in representing us during the selling process, and worked with us intensely daily for several months to ensure an optimal transaction outcome. Their ability to move with unmatched speed while digging incredibly deep into the details of the business sets them apart and ensured the best possible outcome.” — Founder & CEO, Advanced Design/Manufacturing Company
MedTech & Life Sciences | Complex Medical Devices & Lab Tools Company
“Audacity IB did an incredible job, not only in representing us throughout the selling process; but in working with us daily for many months prior to the sale, to help us build operations and accelerate growth well before the company was sold. Finding a quality, trustworthy M&A investment banker capable of also effectively serving in the trenches with a founder as a trusted long-term co-executive partner is very rare.” — Founder & CEO, MedTech/Life Sciences Company
Sustainable Food & Aquiculture Sourcing Company
“Simply put, the deal team did unbelievable work for us from start to finish and we are very thankful that we selected Audacity IB to lead this fast-paced and highly complex transaction. We were very impressed with their aggressiveness, creativity, and ability to run a process and close a transaction in less than five months from start…while delivering an outcome and strategic partnership that significantly exceeded our expectations.” — Founder & CEO, Sustainable Food & Aquiculture Sourcing Company
Emerging AI/Technology Company
“We engaged Audacity IB looking for more than just banking advice. They impressed us with their financial advisory depth, technical rigor, and ability to rapidly synthesize our business, and advise us on strategic alternatives. They also stepped in as a true financial leadership partner, not only clarifying our options but preparing us for growth. On top of that, they were amazing to work with! — Techstars Founder & CEO, B2B SaaS Company
Deep Private Equity Expertise | Highly Collaborative & Effective on Deal Teams
“This is a great example of a true collaborative legal and financial deal team effort. We were fortunate enough to work with Audacity IB, which was committed to getting the best overall outcome and worked tirelessly to run a full competitive auction. As a team, we moved through the deal process in an extremely efficient and effective manner in the best interest of our shared client.” — Head of Private Equity, A Leading M&A Transaction Law Firm
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Stanford University,
Graduate School of Business
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Thunderbird,
School of Global Management
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Northern Illinois University,
School of Business, Accountancy
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FINRA Licenses: Series 7, 24, 63, and 79
Jeffrey Scott Shippy, MBA, CPA
Founder, CEO & Principal
Jeff Shippy brings more 34 years of experience across investment banking, strategic advisory, operations, and executive leadership. He has advised 200+ companies, completed 40+ M&A transactions, and served in senior operating roles including as CFO and EVP for innovative companies — working alongside founders as a trusted partner to build, finance, and successfully exit their businesses.
Jeff's experience includes more than 20 years dedicated to investment banking, including with Houlihan Lokey and Stout in Los Angeles as Investment Banking Director. His experience spans technically complex businesses across Advanced Manufacturing, MedTech, Life Sciences, Healthcare, Technology, and related sectors, with extensive expertise in complex transactions, including private equity transactions. He also has experience in special situations, including business restructuring.
Earlier in his career, Jeff was a licensed CPA with BDO Seidman and a strategy and operating management consultant with Accenture in Silicon Valley. He has also served in direct private equity investing and operating roles, giving him perspective across all sides of a transaction — as banker, operating advisor, investor, and executive.
Jeff founded Audacity IB in 2020 and subsequently its registered broker-dealer, Audacity Capital Partners LLC (Member FINRA/SIPC) for securities-related M&A and capital raise transactions exclusively for founder businesses. Audacity IB has earned numerous industry awards for its advisory excellence, track record in completing complex founder transactions, and deep technical industries expertise.
Jeff is an alumnus of Stanford Graduate School of Business, Thunderbird School of Global Management, and Northern Illinois University. He holds an M.B.A. in Finance and International Management and a B.S. in Accountancy, is a licensed CPA, and maintains FINRA Series 7, 24, 63, and 79 registrations.
CONTACT US
Los Angeles Office
10866 Wilshire Blvd, 4th Floor
Los Angeles, CA 90024
Silicon Valley Office
2100 Geng Road
Palo Alto, CA 94303
© 2026 Audacity IB. All rights reserved. Securities are offered through Audacity Capital Partners LLC, Member FINRA/SIPC. Audacity IB is a trade name for Audacity Capital Partners LLC and Audacity Consulting Partners LLC. “Audacity IB”, "Audacity", "Audacity Advisory", or the “firm” refer to these two affiliated companies. Audacity IB is not a CPA firm. The firm's Silicon Valley office is operated by Audacity Consulting Partners LLC. It is acknowledged that the content of this website is for general information purposes only and is not intended to constitute an offer to sell or buy any securities or other assets or promise to undertake or solicit business and may not be relied upon in connection with any offer or sale of securities or other assets. The above reference to 200+ assignments, including 40+ completed M&A transactions delivering $4+ billion in combined value refers to engagements completed by our Principal at Audacity IB and at prior firms. Business Continuity Plan | FINRA Broker Check