B. Woods and Co. (BWC) is a Phoenix-based boutique financial services firm that specializes in lower middle market buy-side mergers and acquisitions. BWC’s tailored, proprietary approach enables private equity groups and family offices to tap exclusive deal flow and connect directly with privately held company owners.
Will Woods founded BWC in 2020 with the goal of offering private equity clients proprietary, off-market deal flow and direct access to privately held company owners and operators. With such highly professional and experienced clients, the firm decided to focus solely on origination. This means first becoming intimately familiar with each client’s target sectors and investment criteria before sourcing opportunities.
However, researching private companies and mapping entire markets is a time-consuming process that requires teams to manually scour the Internet and piece together disparate pieces of information. “We had a small team and no formal research tools, so we used an army of interns to basically do Google searches all day,” recalls Will. “We needed a deal sourcing platform that specialized in the privately-held market and could deliver major efficiency gains.”
Will and his team at BWC now rely on Sourcescrub to rapidly get up to speed on specific sectors and identify companies that meet their clients’ investment criteria. They’re able to search and filter through hundreds of thousands of conference lists, industry guides, and other sources by geography, vertical, and other key attributes.
The platform’s AI-powered search functionality recommends specific filters that help the team find highly relevant private companies and then narrow them down quickly. Because private companies in most parts of the world are not required to publicly release revenue information, Will’s team uses data signals like headcount growth, media coverage, and employee count to help measure growth and prioritize opportunities.
Once they have an example company that interests a client, Sourcescrub’s Similar Companies functionality instantly surfaces additional opportunities with similar characteristics. Sourcescrub also allows Will’s team to stay on top of potential targets’ transaction readiness and engage these opportunities at the right moments by automatically alerting them when the target company is added to a new source, hires key executives, or experiences headcount changes.
“Sourcescrub’s AI capabilities really give our firm an edge,” shares Will. “For example, many of our clients focus on healthcare verticals or nuanced segments of the market, and Sourcescrub is able to suggest scientific terminology and other unique keywords that ensure we’re pinpointing the most ideal targets. It’s also not uncommon for me to discover a target company with a particular certification or characteristic that I can then add to my search criteria. Sourcescrub’s extensive network of sources regularly inspires us and enables us to expand our clients’ universe of opportunities.”
Will notes that in several cases, BWC’s clients use Sourcescrub themselves to conduct market fragmentation studies, validate roll-up theses, or plan targeted conference attendance before subsequently requesting BWC to assist in the communication and introduction processes.
Using Sourcescrub’s deal sourcing platform has saved the team at BWC considerable time researching niche markets and identifying ideal off-market targets for clients. These efficiency gains have enabled the firm to stay lean and mean.
“We no longer have to manually comb through thousands of companies while cross referencing multiple data sources, looking for a needle in a haystack,” says Will. “Sourcescrub allows us to create short-lists of highly relevant opportunities in minutes. We’re now able to generate more deal volume than competitors with 5x as many employees. Sourcescrub is a primary ingredient in our recipe.”
Will estimates that monthly sourced opportunities have grown by 35% since choosing Sourcescrub. This has translated into a 3x annual increase in won deals. But it’s not all about volume, insists Will: “Sourcescrub offers the most accurate, comprehensive private company profiles of any vendor out there. So we’re not just sourcing more companies — we’re sourcing higher quality opportunities, and our conversion rates speak for themselves.”
BWC generates approximately 60 introductory meetings for each add-on search thanks to Sourcescrub. From there, the team sees up to 10 submitted letters of intent each month, for an industry-leading actionable target conversion rate of about 13%. “Once we tried Sourcescrub we never looked back,” says Will. “At this point, the platform is core to our business, and we rely on it every day. We need Sourcescrub — bottom line.”
