Your best targets are rarely the companies already in market.
Corporate development teams are judged on strategic fit, internal alignment, and closed acquisitions. Most sourcing channels are built around availability, not strategy.
Your mandate is strategic, but most sourcing is financial.
Product adjacency, geographic expansion, customer overlap, integration logic, and capability gaps are difficult to screen for in a database. Your thesis needs human mapping, not a generic industry filter.
Your team is lean and pulled across the full deal lifecycle.
Corp dev teams source, screen, model, coordinate diligence, manage stakeholders, and support integration. First-touch sourcing often loses priority once live deals start moving.
Banker flow shows you what is available, not what is most strategic.
By the time a banker brings a process to market, every qualified buyer sees it. Strategic acquirers need a way to reach the companies they would buy before those companies run a process.
Noise kills momentum.
A long spreadsheet is not a pipeline. Leadership needs a short list of defensible acquisition targets with clear strategic rationale, owner receptivity, and a reason to take the next meeting.
Internal approval requires more than a good company.
Every acquisition has to make sense to the business unit, finance team, leadership group, and board. Sourcing has to start with the memo in mind.