Proprietary Deals or Broker Deals?

October 16, 2025

by a searcher from The University of Georgia - Terry College of Business in New York, New York, United States

I saw a post here from a new searcher asking for open-ended advice on their searching experience. Responses ranged from “save more money” ahead of time to all kinds of helpful tips on strategy. But, one thing stood out to me was the contradictory advice on sourcing. A number of people saying “Focus more on proprietary deals!” while others said “Only look at broker deals!” This was confusing to me. Why is it mutually exclusive? It shouldn't be. I’ve spent the last 6 years sourcing deals at institutional private equity firms and we always employed BOTH strategies. The challenge for searchers is the limited time and resources to chase both down. This is why is critical to get your sourcing tech stack set up right. I work with searchers & institutional funds to implement best-in-class sourcing processes and technologies. Shoot me a message if you’re interested in setting a strong foundation

Reply by an intermediary
from University of Pennsylvania in Los Angeles, CA, USA

Yes you can do both. The reality however is that at a certain size a broker will almost always be involved. Part of that just makes sense for the seller - they need to be able to evaluate options and have a higher certainty of close. However I think that if you are a searcher and aren't on the phone every day talking to potential targets you aren't doing as Scott said what your institutional partners are doing. Additionally, it will be very hard for you to develop your own track record if your strategy is to just look at banker books. That might work at larger scale private equity funds, but at the searcher level you need more hustle!

Reply by an intermediary
from University of Southern California in Los Angeles, CA, USA & Berlin, Germany

Part of the fault is the broker who is telling the seller that they can get a higher valuation to get the listing. I save buyers millions in purchase price by avoiding auctions and educating the seller on what similar companies are trading at. Brok aenuctions can be good, but if the issue is not valuation then the possibilitiy other buyers saw too many red flags.

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