Does anyone have experience with deal origination services?

August 09, 2018

by a searcher from University of British Columbia in Vancouver, BC, Canada

Hi everyone, I was recently contacted by a mid-market buy-side deal origination service, website here: http://captarget.com/.

Anyone have any experience with these types of services, or even this one in particular? Are they worth paying for to scale up deal flow?

For me in particular, I'm self-funded with a "day job" as an independent consultant, so it would be appealing for me to outsource some of my deal sourcing if it means I can take on some part-time consulting work, as that could give me more flexibility / sustainability on my search timeline.

Has anyone has seen good results from such services?

Reply by a searcher
from Arizona State University in Phoenix, AZ 85004, USA

Have used one for about 3 months ($2500 a month retainer + 1.5-3% success fee) - I'd rate them a C+/ B- at this point. We've seen a few semi-interesting deals, but by and large, have been underwhelmed and feel we've been able to generate the same quality and in greater quantity on our own.

Agree with Jonah, in that most of these online sites are just sourcing deals through the same channels we all have access to and trying to pass them off as "proprietary" hoping you haven't seen them before.

Reply by a professional
from University of Southern California in North Palm Beach, FL, USA

Learn the best practices before you begin searching, and definitely before you outsourced to anybody for anything. If you don't know what should be done the right way how could you evaluate anybody who pitches you?

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