Your acquisition buy box is your thesis, made executable. Set the industry, geography, price, and cash flow you’ll actually buy — and DealStratum turns it into a live filter that works the market while you sleep.
Most searchers know what they want in their head. But “I’ll know it when I see it” doesn’t scale across every marketplace and a hundred broker inboxes. Vague criteria cost you in three ways:
Every feed is full of deals that were never going to be a fit — wrong size, wrong state, wrong margins. You burn hours sorting instead of acting.
The deal that actually fits your thesis hits the market at 6am and gets three LOIs by noon. If you’re not alerted the moment it lands, you never see it.
“I’m open to anything” reads as “I’m not a real buyer.” A tight, written buy box is the fastest way to earn a broker’s attention — and their off-market deals.
Your buy box isn’t a document that gets filed away. It’s the control panel for your entire search.
Industry, geography, asking price, and an SDE/EBITDA floor. Add qualifiers like SBA Eligible, absentee-run, or recurring revenue. Save more than one box if you run parallel theses.
Your box becomes a live filter across every aggregated marketplace. The feed stops showing you everything and starts showing you only deals on-thesis — synced daily, de-duped.
New deals that match your box trigger a daily alert, and every one gets a fit score so you know what to read first. Adjust the box anytime and the whole pipeline re-tunes.
The buyers who close don’t look at more deals — they look at the right ones, faster, with a thesis they can defend to a lender and an SBA underwriter.
When an on-thesis deal lands, you’re alerted that morning — not when you stumble across it a week later. Speed wins competitive processes.
A written buy box is the same artifact your investors, lenders, and brokers want to see. One source of truth, not a story you re-tell each call.
The same criteria that filter the Waterfall power your owner sourcing and outreach — so the off-market deals you chase are already a fit.
“I stopped scrolling marketplaces entirely. My box does the filtering — I just open the digest each morning and decide what’s worth a call.”
Once it’s defined, it powers everything downstream — the feed you watch, the owners you find, and the deals you actually screen.
Point your box at the live feed of the business-for-sale marketplaces we track and watch only on-thesis deals cascade in.
Explore the Waterfall →Use the same criteria to find off-market owners who fit your box — then trace verified contacts to reach them.
See off-market owner sourcing →When a deal clears your box, get a plain-English read — fit, flags, and the questions to ask before diligence.
Try AI deal screening →Set your criteria in two minutes and watch only on-thesis deals start to land in your feed.