What is this capability?
AI tools pull together investor portfolios, recent acquisitions, fund theses, and key contacts; or, on the buy side, surface acquirable businesses by criteria. The output of an associate at a small investment bank, available to a single founder over a weekend.
Why was it difficult before AI?
Capital and M&A research used to require either a banker, an in-house corp-dev person, or expensive subscriptions to platforms most founders couldn't justify. Solo operators either flew blind or skipped the conversation entirely — and left a lot of value on the table at exit or fundraise.
How do founders use it today?
Perplexity and Claude pull together fund focus areas, recent deals, and partner backgrounds with citations. Founders walk into every investor meeting having read more about that fund than the partner expected. On the buy side, founders build target lists of acquirable peers with public revenue signals and clean intro paths.
What businesses become possible because of it?
- Bootstrapped founders running a real seller-side process without a banker
- Acquirers building micro roll-ups in a single vertical from a solo desk
- Founders raising small rounds against targeted, well-matched investor lists
- Operators evaluating partnership and JV opportunities with credible diligence
Tools that help accomplish it
What are the limitations?
AI can't verify private numbers. Anything that matters to a deal — revenue, retention, debt, equity — needs documents and conversations. Use the research to know who to talk to, not to skip the diligence.
Recommended next step
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