A database returns names. It doesn't tell you which ones are still real.
The Sourcing Process
The 16-Point Verified Sourcing Process exists because a name on a list isn't a candidate — it's a claim. Every company we source gets checked against a documented set of questions before it counts as real: still independent, still the right size, not already quietly sold, not something else entirely wearing an independent company's name.
This is the Acquirers-stage version of the process — built for the highest diligence bar in the system. The same discipline applies earlier too: a company's first partner or its first real sales pipeline gets the same kind of rigorous, bespoke verification checklist, just scaled to what that stage needs. Sixteen is what this checklist grew to for M&A specifically — not a fixed number the method requires everywhere.
The Problem
Most sourcing is a database query. Pull companies matching a size and industry filter, hand over the list, move on. The problem is what a database can't tell you: whether that company was acquired eighteen months ago and nobody updated the listing. Whether the "founder" it lists sold the business years back. Whether a funding round listed as "seed" was actually a private equity platform quietly buying control. Static data goes stale, and stale data looks exactly like good data — until somebody actually checks.
Five real candidates looked completely independent — and had already been quietly sold before we found them.
What We Check
The name stuck early, when the list was shorter.
It's grown since — new checks added as real testing found new ways a candidate could look clean and not be. A checklist that never changes isn't being tested against anything real.
Is it actually still independent? Not already acquired, not already absorbed into a private equity roll-up platform, not carrying a strategic investor quietly building toward a buyout — including the slower version, where an investor exits first and the real sale happens years later.
Is it actually the right size? Checked in both directions — big enough to matter, small enough that a firm our size can actually get in the room. A revenue number alone doesn't answer either question.
Is the ownership story actually true? A rebrand alone isn't evidence anything changed hands. Conflicting acquisition dates get resolved against the earliest, most contemporaneous source, not whichever one is easiest to find.
Is it actually one company? A multi-location business can look like a single target in a directory listing while operating as a dozen independently-owned locations under one shared brand — a real question about whether there's a coherent thing to buy at all.
Is it actually what it claims to be? Some vendors are one product line inside a much larger consulting shop, not a founder's dedicated bet on an industry. And when a company touches an actively regulated space, we document its exact regulatory posture as a dated fact, not a one-time verdict.
Before Any of That
Every candidate clears three fast checks first — Location headquarters, confirmed at the source; the right deal size, floor and ceiling; vertical heat, so we're not spending time in a market everyone else already picked over.
The Standard
Every candidate that survives the checklist still goes through a mandatory human review before it counts as a real lead — not a formality, a rule earned by catching real misses. Tested across 25+ industry verticals, the process has sourced and verified real candidates, and caught the ones that weren't: already sold, already funded, already spoken for, before anyone wasted time on them.