Blackmere

Technical Diligence. Deal Execution.
Owned End to End.

Buy-Side Diligence · Sell-Side Representation · Post-Close Execution

An operator battle-tested through experience, not a consultant. I represent private equity in software transactions—buy-side and sell-side—where technical risk, platform debt, or hidden COGS can derail value. I lead technical diligence end-to-end, serve as the technical counterparty to buy-side diligence teams, and where required, execute the first 90 days post-close to ensure the investment thesis survives contact with reality. Post-close execution is not upsold. To date, every client has elected to retain me post-close—even when I advised that no remediation was required—to pursue additional value creation identified during diligence.

Trusted by deal teams who've lived the retrade, the escrow, and the 90-day fire drill—and want the same operator who found the risk to own the fix.

What I Do

Buy-Side Technical Diligence

  • Lead technical diligence for software and tech-enabled acquisitions
  • Identify platform risk, cost leakage, and scalability constraints
  • Translate findings into underwriting-grade inputs and remediation plans

Sell-Side Technical Representation

  • Pre-sale technical assessment mirroring a buyer's diligence process to identify and remediate findings ahead of market
  • Produce data room documentation packages that frame resolved technical debt and explain architectural trade-offs in investment language
  • Function as technical representation for founders during the sale process, ensuring statements align with diligence standards
  • Reduce retrade risk and diligence drag

Post-Close Execution

  • Principal-led remediation where risk or value creation is material
  • Aggressive cloud cost reduction
  • Security and authentication rewrites
  • Infrastructure modernization

AI & Modernization

I take a pragmatic approach to AI and modernization, deploying cutting-edge capabilities only where they create durable product and operational advantage. This includes tuning state-of-the-art open-source models on client-owned infrastructure and embedding them directly into production applications—onboarding, document ingestion, competitive workflows—rather than treating AI as a standalone initiative. I establish foundational AI and agentic capabilities inside portfolio companies, enabling teams to continue building independently after my engagement. This approach consistently compresses multi-quarter modernization efforts into materially shorter timelines, accelerating value creation post-close.

Selected Outcomes

Delivered within 30 days post-close

  • Reduced CloudFront costs by 60% and compute by 40%, directly expanding EBITDA
  • Built modern Firebase authentication powering a Flutter-based mobile app for 2.5M users
  • Deployed enterprise-grade web application firewalls across portfolio companies—closing security gaps that had persisted since inception, delivered in weeks
  • Delivered cloud-native, self-service SSL white-labeling capability inside a legacy codebase
  • Complete network re-architecture and production deployment after years of internal stagnation
  • Zero-downtime region migration from us-west-1 to us-east-1
  • Business continuity planning plus implementation of cross-account, multi-region disaster recovery
  • Identified and resolved a recursive request loop outside the scope of a post-close engagement, cutting web traffic by over 50% and eliminating corresponding downstream costs including observability and logging

How I Operate

Four Principles

I. Technical Authority

Hands-on-keyboard expertise across modern tech stacks and cloud platforms. I assess core IP, architecture, scalability, and team capability with engineering precision—delivering investment clarity where traditional advisors see only complexity.

II. Underwriting-Grade Clarity

I identify critical risks and quantify value-creation levers with enough precision for underwriting—without pretending to scope full remediation before gaining access and authority. Clear enough to price, honest about what remains unknown until Day One.

III. Single-Threaded Accountability

One operator, end-to-end. The principal who runs diligence runs remediation. No handoffs, no knowledge loss, no diluted ownership.

IV. Principal-Only Capacity

Capacity is capped to preserve depth and speed. Work is executed by the lead operator—never brokered to juniors or a separate "delivery" team.

Background

Blackmere was founded by Mo Battah, a software engineer and operator battle-tested through experience, not a consultant. I was the principal executive leading Alpine Investors' largest software roll-up, Actabl—integrating four companies into a unified platform. Prior to PE, I scaled engineering through VC-backed hypergrowth—Series A through a $1B+ valuation. I have managed full-stack engineering, cloud infrastructure (AWS, Azure, GCP), SRE, DevOps, and cybersecurity across multi-product portfolios.
Blackmere was built entirely through private equity demand—a fund approached me during my transition out of Alpine, and that first engagement became buy-side diligence. They asked for more, and that became post-close execution. Then sell-side representation. Every service offering exists only because a PE client needed it. Every diligence client to date has retained me for follow-on execution. I also invest directly—my personal SAFE investment in Kodiak Robotics (Nasdaq: KDK) generated a 4.8x MOIC within one year, exiting via SPAC merger. An operator with an investor lens; I frame technical risk in the language of deal economics.
Current Cycle: Q2 2026

Capacity is capped at three concurrent mandates to preserve principal-led execution.

For new mandates: include target ARR, deal stage (LOI / exclusivity / signed), and anticipated close date.