Carve-out & divestment strategy
The full separation of a $40M technology estate was led end to end — the carve-out executed while the business continued serving its customers.
Case study · Web3 The people stayed.
The people stayed.
The business turned.
A complex carve-out and divestment of a $40M technology estate — repositioning a loss-making product company into a profitable professional-services firm within twelve months, while cutting employee churn from 15% to 5%.
15%→5%Employee churn through the change
$40MTechnology estate carved out & divested
12moLoss-making to profitable
Delivered by ICAN’s leadership in prior engagements and senior roles.
The challenge
A carve-out where the value was the people.
A loss-making product company sat inside a $40 million technology estate that had to be carved out and divested. In any carve-out, the buyer’s first fear is that the people leave — a divestment is surgery on a living system, and the business has to keep operating while everything it shares with its parent is separated.
The brief was double: execute the separation cleanly, and reposition the business itself — from a loss-making product company into something a buyer could believe in.
What was actually done
Carve out, keep operating, reposition.
Business repositioning
The company pivoted from a loss-making product model to a profitable professional-services firm — within twelve months of the change beginning.
People through the change
Employee churn fell from 15% to 5% through the transformation — the opposite of the attrition spike carve-outs normally produce.
Predictable delivery
Delivery-planning accuracy was lifted to 85%, giving leadership a roadmap it could actually commit to during the transition.
A buyer’s first fear in a carve-out is that the people leave. Churn falling through the change is the number that answers it.
What it demonstrates
Separation as delivery, not as a plan.
Divestments are usually sold as advisory: a separation plan, handed to someone else to make real. This engagement was the delivery end of that discipline — the carve-out executed, the business repositioned, and the people retained through it. The churn figure matters more than the dollar figure, because it is the risk every acquirer prices first.
Your deal next
Untangling a carve-out?
Tell us about the separation you're planning — we'll come back with an evidence-based view of the dependencies, the sequencing and the path to a clean break.