PE M&A Deal Sourcing & Outreach

Case Study: Private Equity Firm Gains 1,383 Qualified M&A Targets in Just 9 Months

Client

A leading private equity firm pursuing several new platform acquisitions and add-on acquisitions across multiple industries.

Challenge

The firm was running many simultaneous platform searches across varying industries but lacked the internal bandwidth to research, qualify, and nurture enough acquisition targets. Their deal flow depended heavily on limited inbound banker pitches, existing relationships with existing M&A target opportunities, and limited new target research & outreach. This created a risk of missing opportunities and a mostly reactive deal sourcing process. 

Solution

LongBoard became an embedded extension of the firm’s corporate development team.

Within days of kickoff, we launched a multi-industry search using our proprietary M&A sourcing platform and targeted outreach process to:

• Identify every company that met the client’s M&A criteria.
• Engage directly with owners and executives through personalized calls, emails, and LinkedIn messaging.
• Qualify interest and strategic fit before passing high-value opportunities to the client’s leadership for deeper evaluation.

We handled all research, outreach, and early-stage relationship building, which freed the client’s executives to focus only on engaging with the most promising opportunities the LongBoard team sourced.

Results

In the first 9 months of our engagement (Oct 2023 – Jun 2024):

• 11,241 potential targets identified.
• 1,383 companies confirmed as highly qualified.
• 132 engaged in direct conversations.
• 57 advanced to active evaluation in the M&A pipeline.

Several of these opportunities are now under NDA or in advanced diligence, giving the client multiple viable acquisition paths simultaneously. 

Impact

• Massively expanded deal flow beyond the firm’s personal networks and banker lists.
• Accelerated decision-making by delivering only pre-qualified, strategically aligned targets.
• Unlocked new growth options in industries the client would not have sourced as deeply on their own.