Origination & Advisory | Lower Middle Market
Buy-Side Advisory & Proprietary Deal Flow for the Lower Middle Market
OutSearched builds a proprietary, off-market pipeline direct from owners, and advises you through to close, including on banked deals. Built for private equity firms, family offices, independent sponsors, and corporate development teams.
Partners and Clients
Proprietary Deals Sourced
- Live
Lighting Services Platform
Mountain West
Founder-owned
$4.1MM EBITDA
- Live
Chemical Manufacturing
South-Central
Family-owned
$3.5MM EBITDA
- Live
Steel Distribution & Fabrication
Southeast
$3.5MM EBITDA
- Live
Industrial Cleaning & Environmental
$2.8MM EBITDA
- Live
Logistics Services
$1.6MM EBITDA
- Live
Plumbing & HVAC Services
Midwest
Founder-owned
$3.5MM EBITDA
- Live
Metal Roofing & Building Products
Founder-owned
$1.2MM EBITDA
- Live
Home Inspection Services
Founder-owned
$1.0MM EBITDA
Sourcing in the lower middle market has never been more competitive
~10,000
Active LMM PE Buyers
6X-7.2X
Average EBITDA Multiple
$150K+
Per-Mandate Sourcing Cost
Three ways to plug us into your deal team
We place a trained and managed Business Development rep into your organization.
- Branded as your firm in all outreach
- Integration with your team and systems
- Mandate-specific outreach architecture
- Covers proprietary and banked deals
Elite origination capability without the cost of building it internally. Our team, your mandate, scaled output.
- Branded as our firm to maintain confidentiality
- Scaled, multichannel proprietary outbound
- Mandate-specific outreach architecture
- Weekly pipeline reviews and reporting
- Sourcing tools and data
- Mandate definition
- Negotiations and structuring
- Strategy and implementation
- Growth and integration
- AI and sourcing advisory
Built for institutional buyers who need to source like one
- For Independent Sponsors
Deal-by-deal economics demand off-market sourcing
- For Corporate Development
Deep dive into what is truly accretive and where synergies exist
Corporate development teams require M&A targets that add value. We run targeted outreach to companies that aren’t yet on the market. We help build the target list, craft the messaging, and convert ideas into signed LOIs.
- For Lower Middle Market PE
Platform plays and bolt-ons that bankers haven't seen
- For Family Offices
Direct, discreet, and built around your principles
Family offices want what bankers can’t deliver: discretion, direct seller conversations, and quiet optionality. We deliver market coverage and direct seller access for your patient capital.
- For search funds
One deal, where you need to beat out Private Equity
Search funds are increasingly losing to private equity. You need one sizable deal and you need an early position to win.
- For Business Owners
Horizontal or vertical roll-ups to increase business size quickly
From mandate kickoff to closed deal
Mandate Definition
We meet with your investment team to define the buy-box: industries, geography, EBITDA range, structural preferences, and non-negotiables.
Data & Infrastructure
Direct-to-Owner Outreach
Negotiation & Close
The alternatives and what's different about us
Most LMM buyers stitch together some combination of an internal BD hire, broker relationships, and a SaaS subscription. Each comes with structural problems we were built to solve.
Hiring Internal Business Development
- $150K+ all-in per year before tools
- 6–12 months to ramp
- Capacity tops out at one or two mandates
- Departure = pipeline restart
- Using basic databases that your competition uses too
Working with Brokers & Bankers
- You're one buyer in a competitive process
- Auction dynamics drive entry multiples up
- Limited ability to shape deal structure
- Limited access to sellers to build relationship before LOI
- Off-cycle from your investment thesis
Option 3
Embedded Origination, Built for LMM Buyers
- Fixed retainer + lowest success fees
- Deal team ready in 21 days
- Multiple mandates supported concurrently
- Direct-to-owner before a process exists
- Tech infrastructure already built and tuned
In their own words
Our BD function was already performing well, but we hired OutSearched under the belief that no matter how well-oiled our machine is, we’re likely still missing great opportunities. Nate proved that quickly. Within three weeks, we were in active conversations with attractive acquisition targets. The speed, quality, and professionalism of the process stood out. Could not recommend Nate and his team more highly.
Nate and his team have done an incredible job in sourcing off-market acquisition targets for our firm. The OutSearched team worked with our team to build comprehensive target lists based on industry verticals, geography, size, and other pertinent metrics. Their team has provided strong communication throughout the engagement that has benefited us greatly in sourcing actionable acquisition targets. I would highly recommend Nate and his team to anyone that is looking to build their proprietary deal sourcing pipeline.
Great outbound capability. Submitted an LOI on an actionable target in the first 60 days
Nate Niehuus at Outsearched is the real deal. Nate has been helping me target small business owners in a very narrow geographic target area. I’m his toughest client (no joke), and yet, in spite of my tough assignment, Nate has done an amazing job working his sourcing magic and generating introductions that have led to quality conversations. This guy relishes a challenge, and he works incredibly hard to deliver. I don’t think he ever sleeps.
Nate and his team at OutSearched have played a critical role in helping us uncover and pursue off-market opportunities across several industries. They took the time to understand exactly what we were looking for and built customized prospect lists tailored to our specific parameters. Throughout the entire engagement, their responsiveness and transparency made collaboration seamless. The pipeline they helped us develop has directly translated into meaningful conversations with quality targets. I strongly recommend OutSearched to any firm serious about strengthening its proprietary deal flow.
Nate and team did a great job of laying the foundation for our sourcing efforts. We were able to issue 3 LOIs within a few months of getting up and running. Definitely would recommend to any searcher, independent sponsor, or platform looking to acquire at scale.
I’m the founder of The Edelweiss Company and I decided to use OutSearched to help bring deals forward. They were professional, fast, and I have a deal (nearing LOI) on my plate already with less than 60 days of outbound. We’re just getting started with them. Highly recommended.
From Our Clients, In Their Own Words
- Nate Niehuus · Founder
Built by a buyer, for buyers
Our founder spent years searching for great acquisition opportunities in the lower middle market and kept running into the same problems.
Manual outreach was slow. Deal data was outdated. Brokers were saturated. Tech stacks were fragmented and expensive. And every BD hire felt like a gamble against a market shifting toward off-market sourcing.
If a single experienced buyer was hitting these walls, thousands of others were too. Without a full-time team, modern data infrastructure, and outreach engineered for scale, most lower middle market buyers don’t have access to a complete origination solution.
OutSearched is that solution: a buy-side origination firm purpose-built for the institutional and programmatic buyers shaping the next decade of lower middle market M&A.