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]

Almost every call I take opens the same way.

Someone tells me what they're hunting. Commercial towing. UCaaS platforms. B2B software. Plumbing and mechanical. Environmental services. Backflow testing.

Then they explain why the industry works. Fragmented. Recurring revenue. Aging ownership. Mission critical. Code mandated. And they're right, every time. Those are good racetracks.

Then they tell me about themselves. Fund size. Deals closed. Sector reps. How much dry powder is sitting there waiting. And they're right about that too. Private equity funds, independent sponsors, family offices, there are a lot of very good horses in this market.

Here's what almost nobody leads with.

Who is actually going to run this company on the Monday morning after the wire clears.

The more of these conversations I have, the more convinced I am that this is the whole thing. Not the thesis. Not the check size. The operator who stays.

Because the racetrack doesn't compound anything by itself. A fragmented industry with recurring revenue is a set of conditions, not a result. And the capital doesn't compound anything either. It just sits there until somebody puts it to work.

The person on the horse is the one who has to grow a management team, keep the crews staffed, win the next contract, find the add-on nobody else spotted, and take EBITDA somewhere it has never been.

A great racetrack with the wrong jockey is a slow, expensive loss that takes four years to show up in the numbers. An average racetrack with the right jockey still finds a way to win.

Everybody in this market has gotten good at picking industries. Screening for fragmentation and recurring revenue is not hard anymore. Picking the person who can take a business from low single digit EBITDA to high double digits is still the hardest call anyone makes, and it's the one that decides the outcome.