Win the deal before a banker is ever hired
Most proprietary deals are won quietly, months before a teaser ever circulates. Prowlr watches the public record for the moment a founder- or family-owned company starts moving toward a transition, scores the target, and ties it back to the filing it came from. You reach the owner while the deal is still off-market, not when you are one of nine logos in a competitive auction.
Every target comes with the reasoning and the receipt.
Prowlr does not hand you a list and wish you luck. Each record carries a numeric score, a plain verdict, the reasons behind it, and a source-chain back to the public filing. When a founder-owned specialty manufacturer scores 94 and reads Hot, off-market, you can see exactly why: first institutional capital after two decades, a single-officer structure on the Delaware registry, hiring up across ops and finance. The Form D is on EDGAR. The officer structure is on the state registry. You can open the document before you make the call.
Ask the M&A and PE index in plain language.
Deal sourcing signals, answered.
What public data sources power Prowlr's deal sourcing signals?
Every signal comes from public records you could pull yourself, only faster and scored. Prowlr parses the SEC EDGAR Form D Offerings API for exempt Regulation D raises under Rule 504 and 506, EDGAR full-text search across every filing since 2001 including 8-K Item 5.02 executive-change exhibits, state Secretary of State registries in Delaware, California, and Texas for officer and annual-report records, and public funding and hiring announcements. No proprietary feeds, no scraped private data, no black box. Each scored target links back to the exact filing it came from.
What signals tell you a founder-owned company is ready to sell?
Four early markers, surfaced before a process starts. A first institutional capital raise, meaning a Form D after years of bootstrapping. A newly appointed CFO at a founder-led company, the first professional finance hire that often precedes a sale or take-private. A succession gap, where a founder sits as sole officer with no named successor on the state registry. And a sharp jump in hiring velocity ahead of a transaction. Prowlr scores each one and tells you which catalyst fired, in plain language.
How is signal-based sourcing different from a generic deal database?
A database tells you a company exists. Prowlr tells you when something changed and why it matters: a new Form D, a new CFO, a succession gap, a hiring spike, each tied to the public document it came from and scored for fit. Last quarter, 72 percent of flagged targets were off-market with no active banker. That timing is the entire point. It lets your team build a relationship with the owner before the opportunity becomes a competitive auction.
Who uses Prowlr for buy-side origination?
Lower- and middle-market private equity firms, independent sponsors, search funds, M&A advisory and investment banking teams, family offices, and corporate development groups. Anyone running buy-side origination who would rather reach a founder first than bid in a banker-run auction. The engine is tuned to platform and add-on theses like the buy-and-build programs run by firms such as Audax and Riverside.
Do I own the data and the engine, or am I renting access?
You own it. Prowlr is an engine you run, not a subscription you rent. Your scored records, your source-chain, your pipeline, callable as a REST API and a live MCP server so it plugs into the tools your deal team already uses. The legal vertical runs on this exact engine in production today. The M&A and PE index re-points the same scoring loop onto deal-sourcing sources, with real targets scored from real filings.
Stop renting your deal flow. Own it.
Source proprietary targets while they are still off-market, scored from public filings, with the receipt attached. Reach the owner before the auction starts.