positioning.
11 posts tagged positioning.
Add-on acquisitions: how sourcing differs from platform deals
Platform deals get sourced from a national funnel. Add-ons get sourced from a tight radius around an asset the firm already owns, and almost nobody writes about the difference.
DealCloud alternatives: an honest comparison for PE operators
DealCloud is configurable, slow to deploy, and priced for the upper-middle-market. Most firms shopping alternatives need a framework, not another vendor list.
Independent sponsor economics in 2026: what the cohort actually earns
Real fee, carry, and rollover ranges for fundless sponsors, pulled from the McGuireWoods survey and the law-firm primaries that nobody quotes in full.
What proprietary deal flow actually looks like at the lower-middle-market level
Proprietary deal flow is a system, not a tool and not a Rolodex. What the system looks like at LMM scale, and what running it actually costs.
Outsourced deal sourcing: when it works, when it breaks
A buyer's guide to the three models of outsourced sourcing (offshore analyst farms, agency retainers, software-with-services) and the structural reason each one tends to stall around month six.
When 'AI deal sourcing' is just a wrapper (and when it isn't)
Most AI deal sourcing pitches are GPT prompts on top of someone else's database. Here is what AI actually doing the work looks like: signal discovery, scoring iteration, and a ranking function the firm owns.
When PitchBook isn't the answer (and what to do instead)
A PitchBook alternative is usually the wrong frame. The right question is whether the firm should rent another aggregator or own the layer that sits above it.
Why most M&A cold outreach fails
The SERP blames the email. The data, when you look at it, blames the list and the cadence. A view from the people who build the pipelines that feed these campaigns.
What an open EBITDA multiples database would actually need to do
Every result on page one for EBITDA multiples by industry 2026 is either a public-company aggregate from January or a private-company range with no sample size. Here is what a live, sortable, filing-driven version of that table would have to ship.
Building an off-market pipeline that doesn't rot
Off-market deal sourcing for M&A buyers is a pipeline problem, not a list problem. What owning that pipeline changes about which founders you actually reach, and when.
How the $5M-$50M EBITDA segment actually moves
Lower middle market private equity reads like the upper middle market from a distance. Up close, the target firms, the sourcing math, and the bandwidth problem are different enough that copying the playbook breaks.