Proprietary deal flow for PE firms, without hiring a head of BD.
Direct-to-owner deal flow sourcing built for lower middle market private equity firms. Visbl is the business development function on subscription. Owner conversations against your thesis, infrastructure built in month one, live campaigns starting month two. No success fees, no exclusivity, month-to-month.
Built Around Your Investment Thesis
Industry, EBITDA range, geography, owner age, succession signals. Every campaign is built around your acquisition criteria. Multiple parallel campaigns when you're testing different verticals or geographies.
Proprietary Owner Data
Custom datasets sourced from public business registries, Google Maps, LinkedIn, and multi-layer enrichment. Targets owners who match your thesis and aren't already in every other PE firm's pipeline.
Replaces the BD Hire
A full-time BD hire is $150 to $200K per year plus benefits, six to twelve months to ramp, and you still own the deliverability problem on day one. Visbl is the same function on subscription. Infrastructure built in month one. Live owner outreach starting month two.
Dedicated Infrastructure
Sending domains and inboxes purchased, authenticated, and warmed specifically for your firm. Daily deliverability monitoring keeps emails in primary inboxes. Your firm's primary domain stays clean.
Qualified Owner Conversations
Typical campaign output is 20 to 30 qualified owner conversations per month once the system is running. Replies forwarded to your team with full context: name, company, estimated size, reply text, notes on tone and timing.
Complements Your Existing Channels
Direct-to-owner outreach extends the deal flow you already get from brokers, networking, and inbound. Viking M&A, the largest business broker in the Southeast, runs Visbl campaigns to supplement their own book.
How it works
From setup to pipeline in weeks, not months.
Thesis & ICP intake
(Week 1): capture investment thesis, EBITDA range, geography, succession criteriaInfrastructure & copywriting
(Weeks 1-4): dedicated domain, warmed mailboxes, copy written for each thesis lineLive multi-thesis campaigns
(Month 2): parallel campaigns against your primary and secondary thesesOptimization based on owner reply data
(Month 3+): what produces replies gets scaled, what doesn't gets replacedFrequently asked questions
How do PE firms source proprietary deal flow?
Most lower middle market PE firms blend brokers, intermediary networks, executive search, conferences, and direct-to-owner outreach. Direct-to-owner produces the most differentiated pipeline because owners haven't been shown to every other buyer. It requires proprietary data, infrastructure that actually reaches inboxes, and copy written specifically for the thesis.
Why use Visbl instead of hiring a head of business development?
A BD hire is $150 to $200K per year plus benefits, takes six to twelve months to ramp, and still owns the deliverability problem on day one. Visbl is a flat monthly subscription with infrastructure already built. Live outreach starts in month two. The economics make sense until your firm is large enough that an in-house BD function compounds.
What does deal flow sourcing cost for a PE firm?
Flat monthly subscription. Pricing varies by campaign scope and volume. No per-lead charges, no usage caps, no success fees, no exclusivity.
What kind of results have lower middle market PE clients seen?
Across the Visbl book, campaigns produce 20 to 30 qualified owner conversations per month per client and sustain that volume month over month. Viking M&A, our client and the largest business broker in the Southeast, has had 2,100+ owner conversations initiated through us across their multi-market book. $85M+ in sourced pipeline aggregated across our engagements.
Do PE firms still need brokers if they work with Visbl?
Yes. Direct-to-owner outreach is complementary to broker channels, not a replacement. Brokers represent sellers and run a curated process. Direct-to-owner surfaces proprietary opportunities owners weren't yet planning to bring to market. Most PE firms run both in parallel. So do we, as evidenced by our work with Viking M&A and our lower middle market PE clients alike.
Will this conflict with our existing intermediary relationships?
No. We send from a dedicated domain on your behalf, targeting owners directly. There's no overlap with broker-represented opportunities. Most PE clients use Visbl specifically to source deals their broker network isn't surfacing. Different lane, same pipeline.
Can we run multiple campaigns in parallel?
Yes. Many PE clients test multiple theses or geographies at once. Each gets its own sequence, targeting, and reporting. Common setup is one parent thesis plus one or two vertical or geographic spokes.
What's the guarantee?
If we don't deliver qualified owner replies in the first 90 days of live sending, we refund campaign fees. Month-to-month, 30-day cancellation notice anytime.
90-day guarantee. Month-to-month.
If we don't generate interested replies in 90 days, you get a full refund. No long contracts. We keep the risk.
“The data Visbl pulled for us was stuff we'd never seen before. We started getting replies from people we didn't even know existed.”
Chadd Roadarmel, Atlantic Culinary Environments
Want to see if we're a fit?
30 minutes. No pitch. We'll look at what you're doing now and tell you what we'd do differently.
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