Hi everyone, I’m Olaoluwa, a student at the University of Texas at Austin currently working at a search fund. One thing I’ve learned is that proprietary sourcing is rarely limited by the number of companies available. The real challenge is turning a thesis into a reliable process: finding relevant companies, filtering out weak matches, identifying the right owners, verifying contact information, and writing outreach that does not feel generic. That experience led me to start building ASE Partners, an acquisition search engine designed around the full proprietary sourcing workflow. I’m still learning, testing, and improving it through feedback from active searchers. For those currently searching, what part of proprietary sourcing takes the most time or produces the least reliable results for you?