Introduction: Mark Steele - Self-funded searcher, London, IT services

I'm Mark, based in London. After 23 years in IT operations I left corporate last September to buy and run a small business. Self-funded, searching for an IT services company in Greater London. My career ran from hands on technical roles until more recently, leading teams of 100+ and managing portfolios up to £20M across public, private, and regulated sectors. I've spent six months on the search full-time, three months pursuing a business in the green energy space with a partner, but since the beginning of January I've pivoted to solo acquisition in IT. After disappointing service from a broker, I built my own sourcing tools which allow me to search Companies House by sector, location, owner tenure, business maturity, and other variables, then enrich that data with employee headcount and company URLs by pulling from several different sources. This has created off-market dealflow and I'm in active conversations with potential sellers at present. The biggest challenge right now is that my entire professional network is corporate IT. I'm here to connect with other searchers, especially anyone active in the UK. If that's you, let's connect.