Acquisitions under $5M

Three years of tax returns in. A CFO's workpapers out.

The analyses a CFO runs reflexively — normalized multi-year spread, SDE bridge, every add-back traced back to the document it came from — running on their own as the documents arrive.

In small deals the return is often the only thing you get for weeks. Probity is built to start there.

Request early access Start with the free request list

In private build. Early access opens to a small first group.

Diligence is where a small deal goes quiet.

Sourcing is a solved problem — there are a dozen tools for finding a business to buy. The moment one goes exclusive, the tooling stops. Diligence moves into a Drive folder, a spreadsheet, and an email thread, with nothing connecting what you asked for to what actually arrived.

The analysis gap

You're holding three years of someone else's tax returns, trying to rebuild earnings and work out which add-backs survive contact with a document. That's reflex for a CFO and guesswork for a first-time buyer. Outside help solves it for five figures and several weeks — money and time most sub-$5M deals can't absorb, so the buyer proceeds on instinct instead.

The memory gap

A deal runs three to nine months. Something the owner said in September gets quietly contradicted by his tone in November, and none of it is written down anywhere you can search. When the deal closes or dies, that judgment evaporates and the next one starts from zero.

The enterprise answer is a data room built for $50M deals with a deal team attached. Running one $2M deal through it means paying for surface area you'll never open — and even the ones with AI bolted on mostly summarize documents rather than analyze them. They're built to store a deal, not to read it.

One workspace, from first contact to the closing table.

Five parts. The diligence module is the one that earns its keep; the rest exist so the deal lives in one place.

Pipeline

Every candidate in one view

Track the businesses you're looking at, with your own saved searches from the listing sites feeding the top of it.

Outreach

Sent from your mailbox

Approach owners and brokers from your own email address, not from shared platform infrastructure. You stay the sender of record.

Diligence

The documents, actually read

Upload what arrives. The request list checks itself off, and the standard analyses run on their own as documents land.

Financing

Built around SBA reality

The 7(a) document package, seller-note subordination, the lease-term trap, and why a quoted 60–90 day close stretches.

Deal journal

Everything said, kept

Calls, emails, site visits — timestamped and searchable, across this deal and every one before it.

Mobile

Usable at the seller's office

Photograph a paper document straight into the deal. Dictate the debrief in the parking lot before it fades.

The analyses run themselves.

You don't ask for them and you don't configure them. The moment tax returns are uploaded, the standard set runs — and each one states plainly what it could and couldn't compute from the documents actually on hand.

  • Multi-year normalized spread — revenue, COGS, opex, EBITDA
  • SDE and adjusted-earnings bridge, with every add-back itemized and traceable to its source
  • Add-back scrutiny that flags the undocumented and the inconsistent
  • Margin and revenue trend across every year you have
  • Customer concentration against thresholds you set
  • Deposits checked against the revenue the return reports
  • Questions answered only from your uploaded documents, with citations
  • A lender-ready spread and an attorney-ready issue list, exportable

Nothing stalls waiting for a clean data room

Every analysis runs on whatever is actually on hand and states plainly what it could and couldn't compute — no silent gaps, no blank screen until the seller sends the rest.

As bank statements, internal financials, and payroll come in, more of the library unlocks. The workspace tells you which document buys you the most next, so you know what to chase.

The part that compounds.

Most of what you learn buying a business never gets written down. The deal journal is a dated record of every call, email, observation, and site visit — kept per deal, searchable across all of them.

On your first deal it keeps you honest: what the owner said in month two, next to what the documents showed in month four. On your second, it's the thing no new buyer has — your own history, queryable, so the pattern you half-remember from the last deal is actually there when the same shape appears again.

Your journal on past deals stays readable to you whether or not you're paying us anything at the time. Holding a buyer's own notes hostage would be a strange way to earn the second deal.

You pay when a deal gets real.

Searching is cheap. Diligence is where the work is, so that's where the money is — charged per deal, at LOI, not as a subscription that meters your diligence.

While you're looking
Free

Enough to feel the product — a capped pipeline, outreach from your own mailbox, and the journal on one active deal.

During the search
A low monthly

Unlimited pipeline and journal, full outreach, and the mobile app. What you pay during the search credits toward your first deal room.

When you sign an LOI
Per deal — hundreds, not five figures

Opens the full diligence workspace for that deal: uncapped uploads, the whole standard analysis library, grounded Q&A, and the exports.

For scale: providers who do this analysis by hand charge $5,000–15,000 and take two to three weeks. Data rooms built for enterprise M&A run about $25,000 a year. Sourcing-only tools that include no diligence at all are $83–149 a month. Final pricing is being set with the first group of buyers — if you want a say in it, that's an argument for getting in early.

Who this is built for.

The self-funded buyer

Your own capital plus an SBA 7(a) loan, chasing something between $500K and $5M, no deal team, working nights and weekends. You need to look organized with no staff and not miss what a CFO would have caught.

The funded searcher

A structured search with investors to report to. You need a diligence trail that holds up in an IC memo and enough triage speed to work real deal flow.

The second-time acquirer

You've closed one. You already know what the journal is worth, because you remember what you lost when the last deal ended.

Get in early.

Probity is in private build. Early access opens to a small first group of buyers — people running a real deal, whose problems shape what gets built next.

  • You help set the pricing rather than find out about it
  • Direct line to the person building it, not a support queue
  • Your deal is the test case, so the gaps that matter to you get closed first
  • No charge during early access

We'll email when it opens up. No list rental, no drip sequence — reply and tell us to stop any time.