Axial - caveat emptor

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October 22, 2024

by a searcher in Alpharetta, GA, USA

Background - I have bought 2 cleaning businesses over the past 5+ years and am always on the hunt for the next one. But I'm purely opportunistic - inbound inquiry only.

Someone recommended Axial to me earlier this year and after some discussion I signed the contract. They represent themselves as having proprietary deal flow for which a buyer would pay a fee if a transaction originated by Axial were consummated. If they actually delivered quality proprietary deal flow, I'd be happy to pay the fee.

Since I signed up, I have seen very little flow and none that matched my interests.

Then, last month I saw the same deal (janitorial business) 2x in a week, once on BizBuySell and once on Bristol. So imagine my surprise when I also got an email from Axial with this exact same deal in the same week. While that deal is not a fit, I was still curious about this claim of proprietary deal flow. So I emailed my main CR contact at Axial to ask about this - no response.

Then yesterday I got an email from Axial with another cleaning business (this one in Alabama) which is again not a fit. One day later and I got an email from Transworld with exact same deal.

Suffice to say I will not be interacting with Axial at all in the future. But for all you searchers out there, be aware.

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Reply by a searcher
from The University of Michigan in Austin, TX, USA
Probably too late to the party here, but in my experience, every single deal on Axial can be found online (i.e. on market) with relatively low effort. With that, it seems unfathomable that they'd take a success fee simply for the aggregation of publicly listed deals. Proceed with caution.
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Reply by a professional
from Boston University in İstanbul, Türkiye
The struggle of finding quality deal flow without getting duplicates from multiple platforms is something we’ve heard from many searchers. After my time at Search Fund Accelerator and Deloitte, I’ve spent the last year and a half developing a solution for this alongside other searchers. We’re a team of five, and we’ve built the world’s first Search Fund CRM. Our platform gives searchers their own AI-powered CRM, while our team finds new companies every week and runs proven outreach strategies to generate exclusive deal flow. We’ve had great success over the past year, signing several LOIs for our searchers. We’re officially launching in 2025, but if you’re interested in being a beta tester, I’d be happy to chat. You can learn more at https://searchfundplus.com/
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