For independent sponsors

Build conviction without a platform. Close more deals without hiring an associate.

Define your thesis. FirmOptic's agentic swarm surfaces private companies that fit, researches each one against your criteria, and hands you a cited dossier your capital partners will actually read. First-pass diligence in hours, not weeks.

No subscription. Credits don't expire. Every claim cited.
Thesis Dossier Memo LOI
app.firmoptic.com / thesis / sponsor-industrial-services ● Live

Top matches, thesis-relative

38 researched · 412 in queue
Thesis Industrial services, $3–8M EBITDA, Southeast, owner 55+
Piedmont Mechanical Services
Charlotte, NC · $5.4M EBITDA · owner 62
0.92
+0.04
Coastal Industrial Coatings
Savannah, GA · $4.1M EBITDA · owner 58
0.88
+0.06
Tidewater Pump and Valve
Norfolk, VA · $6.2M EBITDA · owner 60
0.74
+0.02
Blue Ridge Electrical
Asheville, NC · $3.8M EBITDA · owner 66
0.85
+0.03

You signed the LOI. The exclusivity clock is running. You have sixty days to confirm the story, line up capital, and close, and you are doing it with a team of one or two.

The problem

The 60-day sprint no one staffs for

This is the shape of the work for most independent sponsors, and the math does not favor the solo principal.

Sourcing is a full-time job you already have. 93.8% of independent sponsors still rely on sell-side intermediaries for deal flow (Axial, 2025). You and every committed fund are looking at the same auction books. Proprietary origination is the stated goal and the chronic bottleneck. You need more at-bats that actually fit your thesis, not another inbox of teasers.

First-pass diligence is forty hours you do not have. An associate at a committed fund will spend a full week on a target before it ever reaches a partner meeting. You have a Saturday. Coverage depth is the first thing that slips: litigation history, tech stack, real owner demographics, the news trail. The deal either dies on a gap you missed, or you bluff past it and hope.

The capital partner call is make-or-break. Family offices, SBICs, and co-investors want a credible story with cited evidence, not a teaser and a hope (Akoya Capital). If your package looks like it took a weekend, you spend the next three weeks explaining instead of negotiating. And every week you lose is a week closer to a dead LOI.

How FirmOptic helps

The deal team you cannot afford to hire

Four capabilities that compress the 60-day sprint into something a solo principal can actually run.

1Thesis builder

Define the thesis once. Stop rebuilding your target list every deal.

Describe your acquisition criteria in plain English: industry, size, geography, ownership, soft signals. FirmOptic parses it into structured filters and custom research questions, then refines with natural-language edits ("Add Texas," "Move revenue to $8 to $25M"). Your thesis becomes the lens every company is evaluated through.

IndustryIndustrial services, HVAC, mechanical
Size$3 to $8M EBITDA
GeographyNCSCGAVA
Owner55+, owner-operator, no PE history
SoftRecurring service contracts, union-free
2Agentic research pipeline

Cited dossiers on every company. Verify any claim in a click.

A purpose-built agentic swarm reads public filings, LinkedIn, state registries, news, podcasts, and review sites on every company you accept. It synthesizes what it finds into a narrative dossier covering ownership, financials, market, leadership, IP, facilities, legal, and technology. Every claim is cited back to the source. You verify the line, not the whole document.

Ownership agent12 sourcesdone
Financials agent8 sourcesdone
Market agent14 sourcesrunning
Legal agent6 sourcesdone
Leadership agent9 sourcesrunning
42 of 60 sources70%
3Thesis-relative scorecards

Rank fifty targets against your criteria. Not a generic quality score.

Every company is scored against your thesis, not a universal algorithm. Two principals evaluating the same company with different theses get different, equally correct scores. Sort your queue by fit and spend your reading time on the top five.

Fit: ownership
Owner age 62, sole shareholder, no prior PE recap. Strong fit to succession thesis.
Fit: financials
EBITDA $5.4M triangulated from D&B, LinkedIn headcount, and state filings. Inside band.
Fit: market
Charlotte metro service density above average. Recurring maintenance revenue evidenced in reviews.
4Deal memos and sharing

Hand capital partners a package they can underwrite in one sitting.

One click generates a structured memo: executive summary, company overview, financial signals, market and competitive landscape, risk, management, and sources. Share a memo link with a family office or co-investor. They read, they export to PDF, they come to the call informed. No login required on their side.

Capital partner memo
Piedmont Mechanical Services
Charlotte-based commercial HVAC and mechanical services. Founder-owned since 1994. Thesis fit 0.92.
Executive summary
Financial signals
Market and competition
Risk and sources
42 sources cited · PDF export · share link
Proof and outcomes

The numbers that move the sprint

Directional benchmarks based on observed usage. Your deals will vary.

First-pass diligence: from forty hours to two. What an associate delivers in a week, a FirmOptic dossier delivers before your second coffee.

Cost per deep-dive company: from ~$600 of associate time to $2.99. At the Pro tier, every accepted company is a sub-five-dollar line item.

From screen to capital partner memo: same day. The research is the memo. You edit, you do not start from blank.

Sources cited per dossier: typically 30 to 60. Click any claim. Read the filing, the article, or the profile it came from.

Top-quartile sponsor output. The Axial 2025 survey shows the most prolific sponsors close two to three deals a year. The bottleneck is rarely sourcing; it is the capacity to move a target from interest to conviction.

"The work that used to take a Saturday takes a coffee." Language we want to earn, not claim. Leave this slot for a real customer quote once available.

Objection handling

Questions independent sponsors ask before they sign up

How is this different from PitchBook, Grata, or Sourcescrub?
Those are databases. You filter rows and get contact info. FirmOptic's agentic swarm actually researches each company through the lens of your specific thesis and delivers a cited narrative dossier, not a record. Different output, different price point, different job.
How do I trust AI-generated research on a deal I am signing my name to?
Every claim is cited back to the public source it came from. You verify anything in one click. For estimates, we show ranges and triangulation signals. The agents do the reading; you still make the call.
What about off-market coverage? Can FirmOptic find companies that are not listed for sale?
We surface private companies that match your thesis regardless of whether they have engaged a broker. We cannot verify sale intent on any given company; no one honestly can. What we can do is give you a credible story before the first outreach call, so the outreach converts.
I already pay an associate. Why pay for a tool?
Put your associate on the deals you actually want to close. An associate covers maybe eight targets a month at full depth. A Pro credit pack covers fifty for the cost of two associate-days. The tool is the multiplier; the human is still the judgment.
Pricing

Pay for the research you actually run

No subscription. No seat minimum. Credits are pre-paid and don't expire. Buy a pack when a deal is live, sit it out when it isn't.

CreditsPricePer report
20$99$4.95
50$199$3.98
100 Pro$299$2.99
250$499$2.00
Member pricing: Half off every month. Fifty deep-dive reports for $99 instead of $199. Framed for the sponsor running two active processes with a rolling target list of thirty to fifty companies a month.
See full pricing
One last thing

The principal who ships deals uses better tools. Your edge is the seller relationship, the deal structure, and the operator you recruit to run the business. The forty hours of associate-grade reading is not the edge.

Start with 20 company reports, $99
No subscription · credits don't expire · cancel means nothing because there is nothing to cancel
See a sample dossier · Talk to the team
20 reports, $99No subscription. Credits don't expire.
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