Stop building lists. Start closing deals.
Stanford's 2024 Search Fund Study tracking 681 funds globally reveals a stark reality: the median searcher spends 19 months and contacts 3,000+ companies before closing a deal. Only 63% ever acquire anything.
Top-quartile performers? They close in 14 months with 79% success rates.
The difference isn't talent or capital. It's that top performers don't waste their first year building sourcing infrastructure—someone else does it for them.
Where Traditional Searchers Lose Time
Most search funders waste their first year on sourcing infrastructure instead of deal evaluation. The bottleneck isn't finding companies—it's qualifying seller motivation.
The typical self-sourcing workflow:
- Build target lists manually from fragmented databases
- Send thousands of cold emails (2-3% response rate)
- Spend weeks qualifying leads that aren't ready to sell
- Restart when pipeline runs dry (which happens frequently)
This serial approach—build lists, send emails, wait, rebuild—is why median search funds take 19 months while top performers close in 14.
The real bottleneck isn't finding companies—comprehensive business registries make that straightforward. It's convincing owners to actually sell. That qualification process is what eats 12-18 months.
What Exit Guide AI Actually Does
We're a sell-side M&A advisory that uses your acquisition criteria to build our seller network. Here's the process:
- Step 1: You book a 30-minute call and share your criteria (sector, size, geography, margins)
- Step 2: We send anonymized examples of 10-20 matching companies within 1 week
- Step 3: You validate fit—if fewer than 5 interest you, we send Belgian beer and disappear
- Step 4: We reach out to those owners offering free business valuations
- Step 5: We qualify seller motivation and introduce you to serious ones (3-5 per month)
You don't build lists. You don't send cold emails. You don't waste time on tire-kickers. We handle all of it. You focus on evaluating deals and closing.
Why our approach works: When we offer free valuations as M&A advisors, we get 15-25% response rates vs 2-4% for buyer cold emails. Owners are curious about their business worth even if they're not actively selling.
Why This Works: Centralized Business Registries
Exit Guide AI works because we operate in markets with centralized, comprehensive business registries. We're starting in Belgium and expanding to France, Netherlands, Luxembourg, and the UK—all markets with strong data infrastructure.
Compare this to the US, where searchers cobble together data from 50 state databases, expensive commercial providers, and manual research. European registries provide single, authoritative sources.
When you tell us "I want IT services companies with €2-5M revenue in Flanders" or "SaaS businesses in Amsterdam," we can:
- Identify every matching company (not a sample—all of them)
- Pull financial data and owner contacts
- Begin systematic outreach within days
The typical search funder spends 4-6 months and €5,000-10,000 building this infrastructure. We do it in a week and only get paid when deals close.
Common Objections
"But I need direct relationships with owners"
Exactly. Our role ends at the warm introduction. From that point, you own the relationship entirely—management meetings, negotiations, due diligence. We're not intermediating. We just do the unglamorous work of finding owners willing to talk.
"Sell-side advisors represent sellers, not buyers"
True. But we only get paid when deals close. That means we don't waste your time with unrealistic sellers or hide business problems. Failed deals after due diligence hurt us too. Our incentives are aligned: get good deals closed at fair prices.
Start With a Full Pipeline
Top-quartile searchers close deals 5 months faster than median performers. That's 5 months of additional value creation, 5 months less capital burn, and 16% better success odds (79% vs 63%).
Our offer:
Book a 30-minute call. We'll send you anonymized examples of 10-20 matching companies within 1 week. If fewer than 5 interest you, we send Belgian beer and you never hear from us again. If they look good, we begin outreach immediately—first warm seller introductions within 4-6 weeks.
You pay nothing until deals close. We're compensated by sellers on success fees. If no deals close, we make no money.
Book your call: exitguideai.com
Email: hello@exitguideai.com
Sources
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Stanford Graduate School of Business (2024). "Search Fund Study: 2024 Edition." Analysis of 681 international search funds. Stanford GSB Center for Entrepreneurial Studies.
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IESE Business School (2023). "International Search Fund Study." Analysis of 320 search funds across North America, Europe, and Latin America.
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European Business Registries (2024). Including Belgium's KBO, France's INSEE, Netherlands' KVK, Luxembourg's RCS, and UK's Companies House. Centralized databases providing comprehensive enterprise data.
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Industry benchmarks for B2B cold outreach response rates compiled from multiple M&A advisory studies (2022-2024).
About Exit Guide AI
Exit Guide AI is a European sell-side M&A advisory specializing in SME transitions. We use search fund demand, Investment fund, Private Equity and individual Buyer signals to identify which companies to approach, offering free valuations to start conversations. We represent sellers while building custom pipelines for search funders, Investment fund, Private Equity and Individual Buyer based on their acquisition criteria. Starting in Belgium and expanding to France, Netherlands, Luxembourg, and the UK.