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]

It was a search for one of our favorite clients. The kind of client you want on every search.

They handed us a list to start with. We took it and ran.

A few weeks in, it was clear something was off. The companies we were reaching weren't the companies they wanted to buy. The original list just wasn't what they were looking for.

Nobody did anything wrong. The list looked right on paper.

But it set everybody back 3 or 4 weeks.

Weeks of outreach pointed at the wrong companies. Weeks of conversations that were never going to turn into a deal. Weeks the client spent waiting on momentum that wasn't coming.

On a search, 3 or 4 weeks isn't a rounding error. It's the difference between a pipeline that's building and a pipeline that's starting over.

It's why I believe list building needs its own process, and it has to happen before the first call is ever made.

The first few weeks of a search matter more than any others, and the list decides whether they count. Pointing the boat in the right direction from the start saves time, builds momentum, and creates alignment early. Everything else in a search moves faster when the list is right.