A scoped buy-side engagement built around owner-direct outreach, pre-listing broker access, and thesis-fit screening. The sellers we bring to the table came because the fit was right, not because they put a price on the open market.
The best deal on the market is usually the deal nobody else sees.
Listing sites are picked over by the time you get there. Every decent file on the aggregator directories has been worked by fifty buyers, bid up, re-traded, and is either on its third LoI or quietly broken in ways nobody wants to put in writing. First-time buyers burn six months running financials on bad targets. Experienced holdcos pay auction spreads and inherit goodwill they will write down inside a year. The model is not working for either end of the market, and it has not been working for a while.
A scoped search engagement flips that. Instead of standing in line for the listings everybody else has seen, we build a thesis, research the owners who fit it, and reach them before a banker does. When we bring a seller to the table, the conversation starts at fit, not at price. The targets we close on are routinely purchased inside the range the buyer would have paid for a worse business on a listing site.
Because we're a lending partner first, every opportunity is filtered through what will actually fund on day one — available and financeable, not just available. You avoid the common trap of chasing deals that won't ultimately get funded.
Every engagement is scoped from scratch. Vertical, size band, geography, and outreach volume are set to match your thesis, not a template.
Anonymized · Representative Q1 2026 engagement
Cold emails go from a buyer-branded domain we configure at kickoff. Sellers feel approached by a principal with conviction, because they are.
Hard filters are set in week one and enforced through week twelve. If a target sits outside your range, it's killed before it reaches your inbox, not after you've spent time on it.
Tight or broad, your call. Ecommerce-only, SaaS-only, or a cross-category sweep — we shape the universe and outreach language to match the thesis you can defend in an investor update.
Thirty owner-direct touches a week or fifty. The retainer flexes with a cadence you can actually act on. Better to size pipeline to your calendar than hand you meetings you can't take.
Founder-operator targets get a named-owner email sequence. Aggregator carve-outs get a relationship play through the parent's M&A team. The right channel is the one a given seller actually answers.
Every shortlisted file gets a written financeability read before it hits your desk: SBA-eligible, Flex-eligible, or private-credit only. No weeks lost on files the capital market was never going to fund.
Median kickoff-to-signed-LoI is ten weeks. Below is what the first twelve look like on a standard engagement.
Two working sessions with the principal to translate the buyer's brief into a written thesis. Target profile, deal-breakers, capital structure assumed, and a ranked vertical map land on your desk by end of week two.
Named-owner research and sequence build-out. By week three, 200+ owner-matched prospects are live in sequence and the broker desk is circulating your thesis to the intermediaries most likely to surface fit.
First wave of replies is triaged. We run preliminary calls, collect teasers, and put every live target through a written fit memo before it reaches you. Dead files are killed inside 72 hours of first contact.
Shortlist converges on one or two genuine contenders. We coach the LoI, run the indicative financing read, and stand behind you in negotiation. Median time from engagement kickoff to signed LoI is ten weeks.
Signed LoI hands off to our financing desk (SBA, Flex, or Capital Access) and to your QoE and legal providers. We stay on the file through close as buyer-side advisor, but the meter on the search retainer stops.
The non-negotiables — what shows up on every engagement, regardless of vertical or size band.
A seat at the table with 120+ listing brokers and M&A intermediaries. Unrepresented buyers can't get that call returned; we can. Files land on our desk 3-10 days before they hit the aggregator sites, so by the time a deal shows up on BizBuySell, our buyer has already passed or priced it.
Ecommerce, SaaS, and digital services only. A 500+ file base in-category means a named owner is more likely to pick up — and we already know which questions to lead with when they do.
We underwrite every target against what will actually fund on day one. Availability is table stakes; financeability is the filter. No six-week chases on deals the financing market was never going to close.
We kill deals fast. Expect us to tell you when the target is priced wrong, the seller is not ready, or the integration math does not work, before you burn legal and QoE dollars.
The moment your LoI is signed, the file is warm-handed to the lending desk that will close it. No second pitch, no restart of diligence, no renegotiated fee.
One file out of 412 owners touched. Closed on a six-month engagement, signed inside week eleven.
A corporate-refugee buyer (former consumer-goods operator, $1.2M in committed equity, prequalified for $3.5M of SBA 7(a) debt) signed a six-month engagement with a thesis scoped to health-and-wellness DTC brands with $1-3M TTM EBITDA and under 15% paid-marketing dependence. We touched 412 owners in eleven weeks. Two of them came to the table. One signed an LoI at $4.8M at 4.0x TTM EBITDA, seller note, SBA-fundable on day one. Kickoff to signed LoI: 74 days.
If yours isn't here, a senior advisor will pick up within a day of your intake call.
Every shortlisted target gets a written fit memo before it reaches you: thesis fit, financials read, financeability, and seller readiness. If any of the four read marginal, the file is killed before you see it. The buyer time we ask for goes to shortlisted files only — never to triage.
Both. A monthly retainer covers the team, the outreach infrastructure, and our opportunity cost; a success fee on close aligns us to actually finishing the job. Retainer is $8K to $18K depending on scope. Success fees run 1.5% to 3.0% of enterprise value and are reduced by retainer paid. We never take a success-only engagement. It distorts our incentives toward any close, not the right close.
If the target was surfaced by you, your network, or a broker we did not introduce, no success fee is owed. We do ask for a tail period, typically 12 months, on any target we introduced to you during the engagement, even if the close happens after the engagement ends. All of that is spelled out in the engagement letter, not invented after the fact.
A capitalized principal with a signed personal balance sheet, or an entity (holdco, PE fund, family office, search fund) with committed equity. We do not take on buyers still raising capital, and we do not take on first-time buyers who have not yet been prequalified for acquisition debt. Those are two conversations we will have before any engagement letter goes out.
Yes, but the engagements look different. Self-funded searchers get a tighter thesis, tighter size band, and heavier coaching on seller conversations. Traditional search-funders bring their own investor base and need us mostly for outreach volume and broker access. PE and holdcos want cadence: a reliable pipeline of qualified targets that lets their internal deal team underwrite at full speed. The retainer and success fee scale accordingly.
Search is one of three. Advisory carries the file you already found; financing closes it.
Transaction advisory on the target you already have: LoI structuring, QoE coordination, seller negotiation, and close management for buyers running their own search.
Explore Advisory↗The capital side of the transaction: SBA 7(a), Flex, and Capital Access run off one intake. Every search engagement gets a financing read on day one, at no additional fee.
Explore Financing↗Speed-first institutional and private credit for the targets that don't live inside SBA: foreign sellers, roll-ups, and closes inside a 30-day exclusivity window.
Explore Flex↗Book a 30-minute intake call and we'll return a written thesis read (vertical, target count, realistic kickoff date) inside 48 hours. If search isn't the right fit for where you are, we'll say so and point you to advisory or financing instead.
