Berkshire-style acquisition discipline, adapted for the stage before LOI.
How the decision model works →Paste the listing or upload the deal documents. ADE pressure-tests the financing, owner dependence, revenue durability, lender risk, and missing proof before you start paying other people to find the same problems later.
The goal is simple: decide whether the acquisition deserves another dollar or another hour.
No credit card required. Start with 3 free deal screens. Built for pre-LOI screening, SBA financeability, and buyer discipline.
ADE should not treat a buyer with a live deal the same as someone still waiting for the right opportunity. Choose the path that matches the moment.
I have a live deal
If a listing, CIM, teaser, or broker email is already in front of you, start with the deal. ADE will pressure-test financing support, owner dependence, earnings durability, lender-readiness gaps, and missing proof before the process gets expensive.
Run My Live DealI do not have a live deal yet
You do not need to create an account just to understand the output. Review the public sample, see the financing and proof-gap logic, and come back when a real opportunity lands in your inbox.
View the Full Sample AnalysisLiking the company and trusting the acquisition are two different decisions. ADE is built for the moment when a promising business has to survive financing, evidence, transition, buyer-fit, and downside pressure.
First impression
Revenue, margins, industry, and the seller can make a company feel attractive before the acquisition itself has been pressure-tested.
ADE pressure test
ADE challenges financing support, owner dependence, evidence quality, earnings durability, transition readiness, concentration, and buyer fit instead of letting the first impression stand on its own.
Defined decision path
Proceed with caution is not indecision. It means the deal may deserve another step, but ADE has identified what must be proven, changed, structured, or answered before conviction is earned.
ADE is not trying to turn every deal into a yes or no immediately. When the answer is conditional, it turns uncertainty into a defined list of what has to be true before the buyer spends more money or sends an LOI.
ADE publishes aggregate counts of saved deal screens and structured decision outcomes recorded by the platform. These totals show the system being used for its core job: screening acquisitions and producing structured decision outputs before buyers commit deeper time and money.
No deal names, user information, financial details, or confidential data are shown.
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Site-wide count of saved Acquisition Decision Engine screens.
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Proceed, caution, and reject calls generated by a structured acquisition screen.
Aggregate platform activity only. No deal details or user information are shown.
The full public sample shows the Acquisition Profile Score, recommendation, financing ceiling, DSCR, proof gaps, buyer risk warnings, decision reasoning, and the advisor-ready handoff. No account is required to inspect the sample.
Review the proof first. Create an account only when you are ready to put a real acquisition through the same discipline.
Demonstration only
HVAC / home services sample analysis
Recommendation
Proceed with caution
Acquisition Profile Score
81 / 100
SBA Financing Ceiling
$1,633,757
Estimated DSCR
1.24x
Equity Required
$182,400
Hard Risk Flags
3
An Acquisition Profile Score of 81 / 100 does not mean “Proceed.” The profile is only one input. Financing pressure, hard risks, weak evidence, or post-close execution risk can still keep the recommendation at caution or reject.“Proceed with caution” is a defined decision path: keep working only if the named financing, proof, transition, or buyer-fit issues can be resolved.
ADE's financing ceiling is not a valuation target. It is a lender-style supportability check that helps buyers avoid anchoring on a price the cash flow may not support.
Hard flags
Watch items
A weak acquisition can start consuming lender goodwill, professional fees, travel, and weeks of attention long before formal diligence proves the problem. ADE is built to challenge the deal while walking away is still cheap.
Pressure-test debt support, DSCR, equity need, and lender-readiness gaps before asking a lender to underwrite a weak structure.
Use a cheap first screen before legal fees, CPA work, QoE spend, travel, and weeks of buyer attention pile up around the wrong deal.
A surviving deal can be turned into an ADE Advisor Brief that carries the facts, assumptions, risks, open questions, and buyer profile into the next conversation.
ADE builds a 100-point Acquisition Profile Score across five public categories. The score describes the deal as presented; it does not get the final vote.
Score is not the final recommendation. Financeability, buyer/operator readiness, Post-Close Execution Risk, earnings durability, evidence quality, completeness, and hard risks can cap or change the final outcome.
That separation is intentional. A deal can look decent on a 100-point profile and still deserve caution or rejection when the facts underneath it are fragile.
See how ADE scores acquisitionsPrice, seller financing, earnout support, transaction structure, and downside protection are read together instead of as isolated inputs.
Earnings quality, margin profile, operating-expense burden, CapEx needs, and the support behind adjustments.
Recurring revenue, cyclicality, revenue trend, and durability shape how much confidence the buyer should put in the case.
Customer concentration, owner dependence, transition readiness, and handoff risk.
ADE weighs downside exposure against structural protection so a superficially attractive deal does not hide fragile risk-reward.
“I briefly reviewed the Acquisition Decision Engine and spent real time with it. The methodology is sound: earnings quality, SBA financeability, owner dependence, concentration, proof gaps. It’s the discipline most buyers skip.”
Charles H. Weatherly, CIA, CFE, MBA
Author of The Valuable Business: Build Strong. Protect Value. Exit Well. (opens in a new tab)
A saved ADE analysis can be turned into a printable Advisor Brief that carries the buyer's current case into lender, CPA, attorney, and deal-team conversations.
The screen helps decide whether the deal deserves another step. The Advisor Brief helps make that next step more organized.
Run a Deal and Build the BriefAdvisor-ready handoff
ADE highlights what is missing, what needs to be verified, and what should be asked before a buyer trusts the deal.
Add-back support not shown
Customer concentration unclear
Seller role not explained
Expiring revenue not disclosed
Lender DSCR assumptions missing
Working capital needs unclear
Start with whatever deal information you have. ADE is built to make intake easier, but it still treats extracted data as reviewable evidence - not blind truth.
Paste listing, teaser, CIM summary, or broker notes directly into ADE.
Try importing readable public page text from a listing URL when the site allows it.
For gated or blocked sites, copy the visible listing text from your browser and paste it into ADE. ADE does not store third-party usernames, passwords, cookies, or private site sessions.
ADE shows extracted text before parsing so the buyer can catch missing, noisy, or wrong information.
ADE does not use stored third-party logins, cookies, private site sessions, or credential scraping to access deal pages. If a site blocks public URL import, paste the listing text directly or use visible page text import.
ADE looks for the places where a deal can appear attractive but still fail basic buyer, lender, or diligence reality.
SBA financing ceiling, not a target price
DSCR and estimated debt support
Buyer equity and seller note assumptions
Revenue durability and recurring revenue quality
Owner dependence and buyer fit
Customer concentration
CapEx and working capital pressure
LOI readiness and lender-support gaps
Hard risk flags and watch items
Chatbots answer the prompt. Spreadsheets calculate what you already decided to model. ADE forces a structured pre-LOI review so obvious deal risks are harder to ignore.
Built around SBA-style financeability checks
Designed for self-funded searchers and SMB acquisition buyers
Uses structured deal inputs instead of open-ended chatbot prompting
Produces a documented analysis buyers can revisit
Helps organize lender, LOI, and diligence questions
Plain-English resources for SMB buyers and searchers who want to pressure-test deal quality, financing support, and risk before the process gets expensive.
Screen an SMB acquisition before LOI with structured checks for financing, earnings quality, owner dependence, lender risk, and missing proof.
Review SBA acquisition cash flow supportability, DSCR, management compensation, reserves, and conservative earnings basis before lender review.
Review seller discretionary earnings, test common add-backs, and see how unsupported adjustments can distort debt support and buyer cash flow.
Use a practical CIM and teaser checklist to identify missing financial evidence, owner dependence, customer concentration, and lender-readiness gaps.
See why acquisition buyers need structured underwriting discipline, evidence states, DSCR consistency, and advisor judgment beyond generic AI summaries.
Compare generic AI deal summaries with a structured acquisition decision framework for extraction, underwriting, debt support, and advisor handoff.
Prepare acquisition assumptions, supported facts, open questions, and advisor handoff materials before LOI discussions.
Screen lower middle market acquisitions for adjusted EBITDA quality, capital stack pressure, DSCR, sponsor equity, QoE readiness, and management depth.
The point is not to make every deal feel more scientific. The point is to slow the buyer down before effort, lender credibility, and emotional energy start doing the underwriting.
ADE is not a chatbot, scraper, broker, lender, valuation firm, CPA, or attorney.
ADE does not guarantee financing, valuation, buyer returns, or deal quality.
ADE is not investment, lending, legal, tax, valuation, or diligence advice.
ADE is strongest before LOI, when the buyer still has room to stop and think.
ADE should make the buyer more skeptical, not less. These answers keep the tool in the right lane.
No. ADE estimates financing capacity and risk. The SBA financing ceiling is not a target purchase price.
A financeable deal can still be overpriced, fragile, or wrong for the buyer.
No. ADE does not approve loans, issue commitments, or replace an SBA lender.
It estimates whether the deal appears to support debt under selected assumptions and highlights lender-readiness gaps.
The ADE Advisor Brief turns a saved deal screen into a structured handoff for the people helping evaluate the acquisition.
It organizes the recommendation, financing view, buyer profile, assumptions, risks, evidence gaps, and open questions so lender, CPA, attorney, and deal-team conversations do not have to start from scratch.
Start with whatever deal information you have: listing text, teaser notes, CIM excerpts, broker notes, revenue, SDE or EBITDA, asking price, seller financing, customer concentration, owner dependence, revenue quality, and transition risk.
Incomplete inputs can still be screened, but weak inputs should lower confidence.
No. ADE belongs before the expensive part of diligence begins.
It helps buyers decide whether a deal deserves CPA, attorney, lender, quality-of-earnings, or operator time in the first place.
ADE is built for SMB buyers, independent searchers, acquisition entrepreneurs, and small holdcos that need a disciplined pre-LOI screen.
It is not built to justify every deal. It is built to make weak deals harder to ignore.
Test the profile. Pressure-test the financing. Document the risk. Build the Advisor Brief. Move forward only when the deal earns it.
No credit card required. Start with 3 free deal screens. Built for pre-LOI screening, SBA financeability, and buyer discipline.