Our founder, Tyler Murdock, got fired from a corporate sales job for “poisoning the sales floor.” His offense: he'd built a system that made him three times more productive than reps who'd been there for years, then taught everyone else how to do it. The lesson stuck. The right system, pointed at the right list, beats a room full of people working a queue.
He spent the next years applying that to outbound, building lists, writing messages owners actually opened, turning cold contacts into real conversations. In 2023, a few dental-side business brokers asked if he could do the same for sourcing acquisition targets. The results came fast. Within a year he was running sourcing programs for more than fifty brokers across the country, over 2,300 seller conversations, $100M+ in transaction value, and $35.6M in closed deals. Three of those broker clients were earning $500K+ a year in commission from the deal flow. One crossed $1M.
Then two things broke the model. A handful of those brokers started putting their own offers in on the deals he was finding for them, the same deals they'd been hired to sell. And a $65,000 sourcing fee he'd been counting on for months died on New Year's Day, for reasons he had no control over. The broker owned the relationship. He owned the labor. He was building someone else's business.
Around the same time, buyers started messaging him directly, independent sponsors, funded searchers, family offices. They wanted him to source for them instead. Same work, but now the owner Aligned Profit surfaced went to the buyer paying for the search, with no conflict and no shared pipeline.
Tyler pivoted the firm. Today Aligned Profit works almost exclusively with funded buyers, independent sponsors, family offices, and boutique PE funds, and the model is built so the incentives can't drift: one client per segment, an operator on every call, and the bulk of our pay tied to producing a deal you actually want to do.
PE firms already eat everyone's lunch in the lower-mid market. They have the headcount, the databases, and the balance sheets to overpay and still make their return. They don't need what we built, and the deals they close aren't always the best outcome for the owner who spent thirty years building the business.
We built this for the buyers who get squeezed by that dynamic: the funded searcher who'd be a better operator than the PE firm but can't win an auction, the independent sponsor building something intentional, the family office with a long horizon and a founder-seller who deserves to know the business is in good hands. Those buyers win when the deal never goes to market, when the owner met them six months early, through a relationship that started before any banker was involved. That's the only kind of deal we source, and the only kind of buyer we source for.
We start with the right owners, not a giant list. Your buy box is scored against millions of records on 15 data points: owner age, tenure, ownership structure, lease and hiring signals, and more. Better targeting is the first step toward a deal sellers actually want to do.
Personalized, research-backed outreach across email, mail, LinkedIn, and phone, from someone with real M&A experience. Owners can tell the difference between that and a generic blast. It's how trust begins.
Before an opportunity reaches you, we've done the pre-diligence groundwork: surfacing financials and pressure-testing fit. The seller feels prepared, and the deal moves faster. Trust built early, through quality data, quality communication, and quality preparation, is what helps you find the right deal faster.
A dedicated two-person team runs your search. The people don't change tier-to-tier or mid-engagement. The toolkit they have to work with does.
Runs the search day-to-day. Kickoff strategy, criteria refinements once the campaign is live, and the first call with every owner who responds. Qualifies fit. Surfaces financials. Pressure-tests seriousness. When an owner's ready to talk price and terms, this is the first person to hear it.
Runs the sourcing engine. Builds the buy box, validates contacts, drafts outreach from the research captured during validation. Manages send cadence and deliverability. Writes the weekly report showing exactly which owners were reached and what came back.
Sourcing works when both sides bring something real. So we're selective about who we take on. Here's where we say no.
If your buy box is too small for the methodology to earn its keep, or so broad it isn't really a buy box ("any profitable business under $5M EBITDA"), we won't start. We'll help you tighten it. But we need a defined sub-segment, geography, and deal-size range before we source against it.
Equity uncommitted. Debt unsourced. Plans built on 100% seller financing. A heavily PE-rolled vertical with no funding and no operating story. The methodology won't fix the underlying position. We expect capital ready to deploy against the thesis.
Plenty of buyers reach out after finishing a book on acquisition entrepreneurship and figure they'll source their first deal in a month. We respect the ambition. We're not the right partner for the first $5M of your education.
We don't compete in parallel pitch processes. We don't run searches for buyers who aren't seriously looking. If you're shopping firms for the lowest quote, this isn't the engagement.
We build relationships with sellers on trust and honesty.
We expect the same from our clients.
We're a buy-side deal sourcing and consulting firm. We identify, contact, qualify, and cultivate prospective business sellers on behalf of buyer clients for potential acquisition.
We're not a registered broker-dealer. We don't represent clients in securities transactions, negotiate terms, participate in closings, or provide legal, tax, or investment advice.
Our role ends when a qualified, cultivated owner is introduced to you and the conversation moves to terms. From there, your legal counsel, financial advisors, and diligence team carry the deal to close.
We'll put together a Buy Box Viability Analysis™ on your target industry and geography. Twenty minutes, yours to keep. If the fit isn't right, we'll say so.
Get your complimentary Buy Box Viability Analysis™