The degree to which a company’s operations depend on a small number of individuals — typically the founder, CTO, or head of sales. High key-person risk means the company would materially deteriorate if that person left. Zoe measures this from communication graph centrality and decision concentration, surfacing single-points-of-failure before diligence closes.
Key-person risk directly threatens deal returns because it creates concentration in execution capability and relationships. If a founder, technical leader, or rainmaker departs within 18 months of close, you face: talent exodus (junior staff often follow key people), customer loss (relationships die with the individual), execution delay (institutional knowledge must be rebuilt), and integration failure (value creation plans depend on specific people). PE firms that fail to quantify and mitigate key-person risk experience 30–40% unplanned attrition in leadership within two years, destroying $1–5M in value per deal. The investors who win price risk accurately and structure retention proportional to the actual dependency.
Zoe measures key-person risk across four behavioral dimensions: communication centrality (what fraction of organizational communication routes through this person), decision dependency (how many cross-functional decisions require their input), knowledge concentration (breadth and exclusivity of their system access and expertise), and relationship ownership (which external stakeholders depend on them). The analysis combines these into a single Key Person Risk Score per individual, benchmarked by role and seniority. The score feeds into the C-Suite dimension (for executives) and Culture & People dimension (for team dependency patterns), enabling investors to model the financial impact of specific departures before close.
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