Originated, By DealGen Partners
Issue No. 31
sponsored by DealGen Partners:
A quick intro, for anyone new here.
I'm Joe Zanca, and I run DealGen Partners. We outsource business development for private equity firms, family offices, and qualified buyers. We work as a partner, not as a vendor. In plain terms, we become your deal origination engine.
The work speaks for itself. On average, our clients are under LOI within the first 90 to 120 days. And we stand behind it: we'll bring you 10 qualified deals within the first four months, or we work for free until we hit that number.
So if you're looking for a new platform company to buy, or one of your existing platforms is looking to grow through acquisition, let's talk. We'll get into the industry, do a little market mapping, and start putting together a qualified list of targets.
Reach out to me directly at [email protected]
"Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do."
— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Looking to buy or exit? Let's talk, Schedule a call
Most groups think they finished the list. They didn't. They got tired of it.
Here is our standard, and I'll say it plainly because almost nobody publishes theirs.
At DealGen, a name stops being a lead in exactly three situations. The first is that they tell us they're not a lead and they tell us why. The second is that they already sold the company. The third is that we have reached out nine times, across four or five different methods, and heard nothing back.
That's it. Those are the only three exits.
And even the third one isn't really an exit. If the company still fits what our client is looking for, we go find somebody else there. A different owner. A partner. Whoever actually makes the decision. One unresponsive person at a good company is not a closed door, it's one closed door.
Nine touches sounds excessive until you remember what the other side of it looks like. That owner is hearing from five or ten people a day. Your first email landed in a pile. So did your second. Touch number six is often the first one that arrives on a day he happens to have time.
If you are open to reviewing some of the recent deals we've found, or search thesis' we've put together, lets schedule a call today.
Some groups have no idea this is the standard. A lot of groups understand it. Very few are actually doing it, because it's tedious and it doesn't feel like progress until suddenly it is.
It's 2026. This is what it takes now.
How many of the names you wrote off this quarter did you actually finish?
This is the part of the newsletter where we open up the board.
Every idea you'll find here is a search we'd happily run with the right partner. An idea earns its spot one of two ways. Either it's a space where we're seeing strong deal flow right now and we're looking for a buyer to chase it with us — or it's a market we've watched fragment, where we see a real opportunity to build something through consolidation.
Feel free to click around and browse our idea database. If one of them fits what you're after, reach out and let's run it together.
If any of this resonates, I'd love to compare notes. schedule a call
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In case you missed it:
Issue No. 28 — The jockey matters more than the racetrack
Issue No. 29 — Why $5,000 a month is the cheaper option
Issue No. 30 — Why deal flow dried up (it's not the market)