In today’s market, as more boomers retire and new businesses emerge, capital is flowing to business owners like it never has before. This is creating new pools of wealth and economic mobility for the American middle class.
However, the heightened levels of fundraising and M&A activity have created a highly competitive market for dealmakers (investors, bankers, and corporates), precipitating the need for better technology to compete effectively.
Winning deals depends on having accurate, reliable, and proprietary data. That’s why we launched Grata “Search” in 2019 to solve the deal sourcing problem. Our goal was to help private market dealmakers find quality deals faster than their competitors by equipping them with top-tier search technology and diligence-grade data. But by listening to feedback from our clients, we learned pretty quickly that their needs extended beyond sourcing.
Historically, dealmakers have had to use one tool for deal sourcing, another for deal data, one for public company fundamentals, and so on. This is not only expensive — it’s horribly inefficient. Timing is a huge factor in winning deals, and operating with multiple disparate tools wastes precious time.
So we decided to create something the market had never seen before: an end-to-end private market dealmaking platform. Our first step in this direction was in early 2023 when we launched Proactive Business Development (PBD), which expanded beyond direct-to-company deal sourcing. We embraced the many channels our clients find deals - whether that’s through conferences, trade shows, industry orgs, and market maps or networking with other investors, bankers, or advisors. We then launched our Market Research product earlier this year to capture valuation workflows around precedent transactions and public comps.
But even after all of that, something didn’t sit right. We heard customers still saying, “It’s hard to find good deals out there. The market is competitive. I feel like everyone is on Grata.”
Sourcing still felt…hard. Don’t get me wrong - it takes hard work and a long time (often years) to source good proprietary deals, but our vision was to always make this process faster and easier.
Today, I’m thrilled to announce the easiest way to find actionable deals. I’m incredibly excited to announce that the Grata Deal Network is live, allowing us to finally deliver on our promise to be the single, centralized dealmaking platform we set out to be.
The Grata Deal Network allows investors and corporates to see live, vetted deals. It’s the best way to manage hundreds of boutique and middle market banker relationships at scale - to access real deals before they go “live.”
And the same is true for the other side. Instead of making hundreds of calls and sending hundreds of emails, bankers can now simply share deals with the middle market with just one click.
Sounds like a marketplace? Not quite - we never envisioned being a market maker or taking deal fees. We’re building a network connecting buyers to sell-side advisors with active mandates. You can reach out to advisors directly, outside of our platform, to start moving the process forward and build real relationships outside of Grata.
Take that all in for a minute.
Before, you would come to Grata, find private companies, and do the hard work to source a deal. Now, you can literally log in to Grata, find a live deal, and buy a company. We’re making it that easy and are excited about releasing more data and tools to make this process even smoother in the future.
If this vision excites you and you want to be part of our community, you can learn more here. (If you’re a sell-side advisor and want to generate inbound interest on your deals from top private equity and corporate acquirers, you can inquire here.)
If you’re already a client, even better - just log in and click on Live Deals for early access.
This is an incredibly exciting time for Grata. We’re blazing a totally new trail in the world of investor technology — and we’re not stopping here. There’s much more innovation to come, so stay tuned as we continue growing and improving.
