How Wickdale Capital Acquired Investor Machine Using Grata

Wickdale Capital set out with a focused mandate: acquire and operate one exceptional B2B business for the long term. As a traditional search fund, the firm needed more than just volume – it needed conviction. The Wickdale team was looking for a complete view of the market, enough context to identify the right businesses, and the ability to connect with owners through outreach that felt specific, informed, and credible.

As a search fund founder, Kunal Pasrija took a stewardship-oriented approach to small business ownership. A traditional search fund focuses on acquiring a single small to medium-sized business, preserving its legacy, and investing in growth for customers, employees, and partners.  

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Kunal’s own background shaped that philosophy. Before launching Wickdale, he built experience across finance, operations, and growth, including roles in investment banking, business operations at Uber Eats, and executive leadership as Chief of Staff to the CEO of a private equity portfolio company.

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That combination of deal discipline and operating experience gave Kunal a clear view of what he needed from the search process. He was not looking for the fastest way to build a list, but rather a better way to understand the market, identify high-fit opportunities, and start the right conversations.

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Grata helped him do exactly that.

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Moving Beyond Manual Search

When Kunal launched his search, he started the way many searchers do: manually.

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He used Google Maps to identify companies in his city and trialed deal sourcing platforms as complementary search tools. Those methods quickly exposed a larger challenge. As a traditional searcher, Kunal had not yet narrowed his search to one specific type of company. He needed to see the full market before deciding where to focus.

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“Having a large dataset that collects the information I would want on private companies and is tailored towards someone like myself seemed like a great option,” Kunal said. “It was almost a no-brainer to sign up for Grata.”

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As his search expanded beyond local markets and single industries, manual research became harder to scale. Understanding a company’s history, employees, competitors, customer base, and differentiation through standard web searches was slow and fragmented. Every new target required another round of searching, reading, validating, and piecing together context.

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Grata changed the workflow. Instead of starting from scattered search results, Kunal could use Grata to understand companies in context, ask more targeted questions, and identify similar businesses from a single platform purpose-built for private market dealmakers.

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“As I scaled up, it quickly became obvious that we needed a solution that had the comprehensiveness of Grata,” he said.

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Finding the Right Market, Then the Right Company

Wickdale Capital’s acquisition criteria were specific. The firm was looking for a B2B business with recurring revenue, strong customer retention, a software or services-based revenue model, at least $5M in annual revenue, and a history of profitability and sustained growth.

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Grata helped Kunal translate those criteria into a focused, actionable target list.

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Using Grata’s search and filtering capabilities, he narrowed the market to roughly 250 tech-enabled services companies in Texas that matched his desired employee range and other criteria. That list became the foundation for a more disciplined outreach process.

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“I was able to identify a more high-value target because of Grata’s search and filtering capabilities,” Kunal said. “I took a list of companies that matched a very select set of criteria I wanted, then I was able to go through that qualified list, do my own research on those companies and founders, and send a more personalized, targeted message.”

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The difference showed up in the response.

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“I get plenty of emails from people asking about the business,” said Jason Lewis, co-founder of Investor Machine. "But Kunal’s email stood out because it was clear that he had done the homework on both the company and me.”  

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For a searcher competing for owner attention, that distinction mattered. Grata did not replace the human work of judgment, research, and relationship building, but it made that work more focused. Kunal could spend less time assembling basic company context and more time understanding which owners were worth reaching, and what would make the message relevant to them.

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Expanding the Search Without Losing Focus

Once Kunal found companies that fit his thesis, Grata helped him expand from those signals.

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“If I found a target I liked, Grata’s Similar Search feature was always helpful because I could give it a list of a few companies I was interested in, and then it would find similar ones,” he said. “It allowed me to expand my list and therefore my outreach volume.”

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That ability to grow a list from known-fit companies gave Kunal a more efficient way to cover the market. Instead of widening the search indiscriminately, he could build outward from businesses that already matched his criteria.

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Grata’s conference data also became a valuable part of the process, especially early in the search when he was still refining his industry focus. He used Grata to identify relevant events, understand which companies would be in the room, and decide who to contact ahead of time.

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“It’s a way to not only find companies but also see where they’ll be and who you can get in front of,” Kunal said. “That’s a lot of information that is either very industry-specific or manual to go find individually, so it was nice to have all that in one place on Grata.”

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At events, Grata’s mobile app extended that visibility beyond the desk.

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“I was at a conference and used Grata’s mobile app to familiarize myself with some companies around me,” he recalled. “With Grata, I had that ability on an app versus not having PitchBook or anything else. It was a lot more detailed than I would have gotten on Google.”

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From Targeted Outreach to a Closed Acquisition

Across all sourcing channels, Kunal contacted thousands of companies.  

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“The one deal that I found and closed was from Grata,” he said. “Other avenues didn’t work as well as simply doing a targeted, personalized outreach to somebody that I found on the platform, where there was information that was able to feed into that outreach.”

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That acquisition was Investor Machine, a managed marketing partner that helps professional real estate investors source off-market deals. The company pairs proprietary county-level seller data with client-specific targeting algorithms and fully managed direct mail execution, delivering 4–6x+ return on ad spend for members nationwide. It was exactly the profile Wickdale set out to find: B2B, recurring revenue, solving a real problem for a niche market, and hard-to-replicate assets.

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For Kunal, the path to this outcome reflected the value of combining better market visibility with disciplined execution. Grata helped him identify the company, understand why it fit, and craft the kind of owner outreach that could start a real conversation.

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The result was not just a longer list, but a better one, and ultimately, the right one.

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Grata: A No-Brainer for Searchers

After closing the acquisition and shifting into operating the business, Kunal continued to find new ways to use Grata, including building outreach lists for Investor Machine prospects. But his strongest endorsement is for searchers who are in the position he was in at the beginning of his process: trying to understand an opaque market, develop a thesis, and find the company worth acquiring.

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“I certainly recommend Grata for anyone in my shoes as a traditional searcher,” he said.  

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His advice to new searchers is to learn the process manually first. Research and reach out to at least 50 companies before leaning too heavily on AI or automation. That foundation, he said, helps searchers understand what good research looks like, what makes outreach credible, and where technology can create the most leverage.

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For Wickdale Capital, that leverage translated into a closed acquisition. Grata gave Kunal the visibility to see the market, the tools to narrow it with precision, and the company intelligence to turn targeted outreach into the deal that mattered.

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