This is part 2 to my post : The 5 ways I'm using AI in my search - redacted Gist: redacted is open and free to use - yes free. After a month of burning the midnight oil - quite literally - I'm ready to open up Solosearcher to everyone. It's taken a few twists and turns, but I think I'm ready for everyone to use it. There are parts I wish were better but its time to just rip the bandaid off. Please share your feedback, and ideas. I will fix bugs as quickly as I can. BACKGROUND I come from tech. Founding & selling Tindie.com 11 years ago. Working at various tech companies - Netflix, Yelp, and a bunch of startups that got acquired in the Web 2.0 era. After a solid run in tech, I made the pivot into ETA. In 2024, as I started looking for businesses to buy, the day to day made me think - there has to be a better way to manage a search. * Start with all of the companies around me to understand what is even out there. * Organize all of the brokered listings I bump into * Keeping files organized by company - not in folders and my email * Organize my AI prompts by the company for reference in the future. As time went on, the problems I bumped into just kept bothering me. I would build a version, throw it out when it wasn't right, starting over, over and over. At this point, I can't tell you how much code I've thrown out - it's been a passion project I just couldn't shake. Then a month ago, I published - The 5 ways I'm using AI in my search. It has blown up much more than I could ever imagine. redacted * People are using the templates for the prompts I personally use * Others wanted access to my enriched dataset to mine for companies to reach out to * Most just keep telling me 'I want access!' At a certain point, you just have to give people what they want. After a month of burning the midnight oil - it's ready for everyone to give it a try. WHAT IS SOLOSEARCHER It is a free, private operating system for searchers to manage a search. WHAT CAN YOU DO * Sign up, fill in what you are searching for, and instantly have a starting dataset of up to 5,000 companies near you that fit your search - solving the proprietary search problem. * You can instantly see companies that are within a radius around you, the company's estimated SDE and revenue, and begin researching them. * Now you could do this manually but the power comes from the AI skills - which have also been refined, rewrittten and crafted over months- which are also instantly accessible for your AI agent (Claude, Chatgpt, Gemini etc) * Solosearcher comes with an MCP connection. MCP is a technical term so if you aren't technical, I'll keep it simple. You tell your agent "Hey Solosearcher is where I'm organizing my search. It comes with powerful skills to help me review companies & CIMs. We will organize my search here, and store AI analysis on the companies in my Solosearcher account." Your AI Agent is your worker Your Solosearcher account is where the work is stored & visible to you * Once you've set that up, you can manually prompt your AI agent "Research company X in solosearcher and store the report." and your AI agent will pull the company from your account, use my research company skill, and then UPDATE the record with the information you find. Company website, owners, description, history, you name it. ALL in an easy to view interface. This lets you store this information and add to it over time. * Want to level it up? Tell you Claude or ChatGPT to setup a Scheduled Task - and run research WHILE YOU SLEEP. Wake up to X number of companies researched, enriched and instantly you have companies ready for you to reach out to. Pretty neat! * Want to take it one step further? Using my Listing skill, tell your agent "Every night, I want you to look at X Brokerage, and see if new listings fit my search criteria on Solosearcher. Store those listings on Solosearcher." Now you login each morning, and see the listings that have been published in the last 24 hours, and each comes with an analysis to tell you why it fits your search. Easily stored to add any files you get, and or convert into a company once you figure out the name of the company. No more living in folders, emails, Google Drive, Chat histories. Everything organized by company, everything in one place, private and accessible by your Ai agent. It's free to use and private to you. WHAT HAPPENED TO THE DATA SITE? If you saw a few weeks ago, I opened my database to people to get datasets. The simple answer - people wanted everything else. So I turned it off, and went back to work on making the entire system easier to use and ready for a wider audience. Just look at the comments. Basically daily I get something like "I want access." So here we are! If you bought data, and want to load it into your account, there is an import button on the Companies page. It will give you the data template to upload data into your account. Just ask your AI agent to merge your data into this format. BAM - data in the right format, and you can upload it right away. WHY IS IT FREE? YOU KNOW YOU COULD CHARGE FOR IT RIGHT? I've thought about this several times, charge a lot, charge a little, charge a one time fee. End of the day, I'm not trying to turn this into a business. It's a tool I use for my search. The purpose isn't to spin up another tech company. The hosting costs will be minimal. I figure make it free, the more people that use it, the more feedback I will get, the better it will get for everyone (and me too!). That is more important than charging for it. My costs will go up $50 a month, o well. HOW IS THIS DIFFERENT THAN USING HUBSPOT OR ANOTHER CRM? 1. You get access to my 4.4m company database that has been enriched with Estimated Revenue, Estimated SDE, and Geocoded to allow for queries "Find the plumbers 100 miles around me." That gets you proprietary dataset for free. 2. It is organized for an ETA business acquisition - not a generic CRM. All of the features are tailored to sourcing, evaluating and buying a company. 3. Ai Skills Library - my skills library continues to grow and get refined. Instead of coming up with custom prompts, you instantly get the skills I've crafted for sourcing, evaluating, and buying a business. These will only continue to get better over time. 4. It's free. WHAT LEVEL OF AI SUBSCRIPTION SHOULD I HAVE You will likely burn through your AI credits quickly if you aren't on a $100 or $200 per month plan. I would recommend one of those especially if you want to run scheduled tasks like : * Research companies in Solosearcher * Check Brokerage Sites and import those listings CAN YOU SEND EMAILS FROM SOLOSEARCHER I had this in it, but ripped it out - I might put it back in. We will see how it goes. You could easily set up scheduled tasks to email business owners or brokers via Solosearcher. However, as one searcher put it, I would just make it even more crazy out there by tying emails, my datasets, and AI together. Start simple- I can always add it back in. HOW MANY COMPANIES CAN I HAVE IN MY ACCOUNT Up to 5000 are loaded in when you signup. Each month, you can 5000 from my 4.4m company database. HOW MANY AI QUERIES CAN I PERFORM Unlimited. Just connect Solosearcher MCP to your AI Agent. You perform these queries from your Ai agent of choice and the results are stored in Solosearcher when you use on of my AI skills. WHAT OTHER TRICKS DO YOU HAVE UP YOUR SLEEVES A few things I am thinking about - * Brokerages & Brokers - I have a master list of these so I can integrate that data as well. You instantly find the brokerages and brokers near by. * Email integration - to send emails directly from your Solosearch (like a Salesforce or Hubspot) * Better financial support - there is a lot to do on this part to make financial analysis easier. - Add back detection - Deal modeling - SBA 7a validation (esp with the new rules) * More CIM analysis - I am not looking at your data. If you look at the privacy policy, it is pretty darn packed with everything. So your Solosearch is not breaking your NDA. However when you upload a CIM, I can craft more skills and add that to the UI / UX. * Document generation - LOIs, IOIs, you name it Who knows there is plenty to add in. The point is to just go live and get it in everyone's hands so you can help me figure out what to add next. HOW CAN I GIVE YOU FEEDBACK Please leave comments on this post. Its been tricky keeping track of DMs, Linkedin, Emails, etc. This will let me keep track of user feedback in one place and i can reply to you individually on your idea. Hopefully this helps everyone - happy searching! redacted