How the origination engine works

Thesis in, verified scored longlist out, with the outreach, the CRM records and the client deck behind it. Every artefact on this page is one the system produces.

In short

Built inside PCB Partners, a UK M&A advisory firm, by Henry Qin, now Founding Partner for Finance & Investment Banking at Algosoup, and published with their agreement. This is the working detail behind the case study: what each stage does and the artefact it hands over.

Origination is where the alpha is

The edge is finding targets nobody else surfaced. Owner operated, right size band, a founder near succession who has not been approached.

The judgement takes an afternoon. Getting to the point where judgement has something to work on took most of a month.

How it runs

An analyst types what they want in plain English and the output lands in Excel, PowerPoint and the CRM the firm already keeps. Nobody wanted a bespoke interface, and building one is the fastest way to be ignored.

It drafts, a person sends. It warns before it spends, never guesses a name or an email, and cannot write to live client folders at all.

Brief to shortlist in one run

The mandate file holds the criteria, the ICP and the hard gates, and scoring is relative: candidates are ranked against each other, weighted by what the client said mattered. One run carries it from there to the material a partner takes into a meeting, inside the tools the desk already has open.

Thesis to meeting, one record throughout

Stage 1

Client thesis

An unstructured brief, often an email.

Output: Raw thesis

Runs inside the agentic environment the analysts already work in, not a separate product. 12 stages, 3 points where a person decides.

Sourcing the longlist

2,400 candidates from PitchBook, Inven, Grata, SourceScrub, Harmonic, Sales Navigator, the national registers and the trade press. A cheap pass drops 1,900; the 500 survivors get 7 evidence passes each.

Source precedence is written down: the register beats the team page beats press. Unknowns get a dash. It does not guess a name or an email.

Client longlist, anonymised from a real run

15 cols

#	Company	Website	LinkedIn	Description	Employees Count	HQ	Partnerships	Revenue	EBITDA	Financials Year-End	Ownership Type	Ownership Details	Cap Table	Founded
1	██████████████████	https://████████████████.co.uk	https://www.linkedin.com/company/████████████████	Exeter-based delivery consultancy and application support provider specialising in Atlassian tooling, working with regulated financial services, housing and utilities clients across the south west. Runs toolchain migrations as fixed-scope engagements, then holds the resulting estates on long-running support retainers. Delivery is in-house with no offshore arm.	74	Exeter, UK	Atlassian Solution Partner	£6.2m	£0.9m	Companies House, FY25	Family owned	UK Ltd company incorporated 2008 (30643842). Held by ████████████ per the Companies House register, with the holding banded rather than exact and no institutional layer above.	TBC	2008
2	██████████████████	https://████████████████.com	https://www.linkedin.com/company/███████████████████████████	Cork-based revenue systems consultancy specialising in HubSpot, providing CRM implementation, reporting and integration for subscription and SaaS businesses across Ireland and the UK. Holds Diamond tier, which is unusual at this headcount. Work is billed largely on project rather than retainer, so revenue is lumpier than the peer set.	19	Cork, Ireland	HubSpot Diamond Partner	TBC	TBC	CRO, FY24	Privately held (no backing)	Irish Ltd company incorporated 2016 (547796). Held by ████████████ per the CRO register, with the holding banded rather than exact and no institutional layer above.	TBC	2016
3	█████████████	https://█████████████.com	https://www.linkedin.com/company/█████████████	Derby-based business software and training provider working across Zoho and Xero, covering finance, practice management and workflow tools for accountancy firms, wholesalers and professional services clients. The training practice runs alongside implementation and carries its own margin, which is uncommon in this segment. Employee owned, with no external capital.	128	Derby, UK	Zoho Premium Partner; Xero partner	£14.6m	TBC	Companies House, FY25	Employee owned	UK Ltd company incorporated 1994 (69066483). Held by ████████████ per the Companies House register, with the holding banded rather than exact and no institutional layer above.	TBC	1994
4	██████████████████	https://████████████████.de	https://www.linkedin.com/company/████████████████	Stuttgart-based process and integration consultancy specialising in SAP Business One, serving Mittelstand manufacturers and industrial suppliers across Baden-Württemberg. Maintains a documented integration accelerator resold through two regional partners, alongside annual support contracts on the installed base. Founder-led and single-site.	46	Stuttgart, Germany	SAP Silver Partner	€5.4m	€0.6m	Bundesanzeiger, FY25	Family owned	German GmbH incorporated 2005 (HRB 34310). Held by ████████████ per the Bundesanzeiger register, with the holding banded rather than exact and no institutional layer above.	TBC	2005
5	███████████████	https://███████████████.co.uk	https://www.linkedin.com/company/███████████-erp	Swansea-based workflow and integration consultancy specialising in ServiceNow, working with public sector bodies, housing associations and healthcare trusts across Wales and the south west. Framework access carries a material share of the pipeline, so transferability would need diligence. Incorporated 2021 and grown without acquisition.	31	Swansea, UK	ServiceNow Specialist	TBC	TBC	Companies House, FY24	Corporate-owned	UK Ltd company incorporated 2021 (72977509). Held by ████████████ per the Companies House register, with the holding banded rather than exact and no institutional layer above.	TBC	2021
6	██████████████████	https://████████████████.com	https://www.linkedin.com/company/████████████████	Aberdeen-based analytics and reporting consultancy built on Qlik and IBM, serving energy, engineering and logistics clients across Scotland and the north of England. Combines dashboard build-outs with a long-standing support book billed on annual contracts, which accounts for the majority of gross profit. Elite tier since 2016.	88	Aberdeen, UK	Qlik Elite Partner; IBM partner	£9.7m	£1.4m	Companies House, FY25	Privately held (no backing)	UK Ltd company incorporated 1987 (89926083). Held by ████████████ per the Companies House register, with the holding banded rather than exact and no institutional layer above.	TBC	1987
7	█████████████	https://████████████.co.uk	https://www.linkedin.com/company/███████-cloud	Norwich-based content and experience software consultancy specialising in Adobe, working with publishers, membership bodies and consumer brands on web estates and digital asset management. Small but wholly recurring licence base, unusual at this size, which makes revenue quality better than the headline figure suggests.	12	Norwich, UK	Adobe Solution Partner	TBC	TBC	Companies House, FY24	Privately held (no backing)	UK Ltd company incorporated 2019 (86496822). Held by ████████████ per the Companies House register, with the holding banded rather than exact and no institutional layer above.	TBC	2019
8	██████████████████	https://██████████.nl	https://www.linkedin.com/company/████████████████	Ghent-based cloud infrastructure and support provider working across Red Hat and AWS, serving mid-market clients throughout Flanders and the southern Netherlands. Two acquisitions made in 2019 and 2022 remain unintegrated on separate toolchains, which is the principal reservation on an otherwise clean asset.	57	Ghent, Belgium	Red Hat Advanced Partner; AWS Select	€8.1m	TBC	KBO, FY25	Privately held (no backing)	Belgian BV incorporated 2012 (BE 0681474968). Held by ████████████ per the KBO register, with the holding banded rather than exact and no institutional layer above.	TBC	2012
9	██████████████████	https://██████████.com	https://www.linkedin.com/company/████████-business-systems	Preston-based data engineering and consultancy business built on Snowflake and Tableau, working with retail, manufacturing and public sector clients on warehousing, pipelines and reporting. The data platform practice was grown organically rather than bought and is now the larger half of revenue. Family owned since 1979.	140	Preston, UK	Snowflake Select Partner; Tableau partner	£18.3m	£2.6m	Companies House, FY25	Family owned	UK Ltd company incorporated 1979 (85766880). Held by ████████████ per the Companies House register, with the holding banded rather than exact and no institutional layer above.	TBC	1979
10	███████████	https://███████████.com	https://www.linkedin.com/company/███████████	Dundee-based service desk software and support provider reselling Freshworks and Zendesk on per-seat contracts with three year terms, to education, charity and small enterprise clients across Scotland. No owned hosting estate, so the cost base is light and gross margin sits above the peer set. Incorporated 2023 after a management spin-out.	26	Dundee, UK	Freshworks partner; Zendesk partner	TBC	TBC	Companies House, FY24	Corporate-owned	UK Ltd company incorporated 2023 (30938054). Held by ████████████ per the Companies House register, with the holding banded rather than exact and no institutional layer above.	TBC	2023

10 of 214 rows, UK and mainland Europe. Columns, order and cell register are the sheet's own. Links are live in the workbook; these 404.

Quality control, because models drift

Verified means confirmed in the register that owns the claim, not a badge on a website. A language model is stochastic, so an independent pass reads each column top to bottom before scoring and re-fetches a sample of the sources.

The QC pass, before and after

7 findings across 10 rows

Company	Jurisdiction	Headcount	Ownership	Revenue	Partnership
███████████████
██████████████████
█████████████
██████████████████
██████████████████
██████████████████
█████████████
██████████████████
███████████
██████████████████

Select a flagged cell to see what it was, what it became, and the written basis for the revision. The defects are scattered on purpose: row by row none of them looks wrong, which is why the pass reads each column top to bottom instead.

Profiles in the house format

One record renders the internal tab, the client tab, the letters, the CRM rows and the target profiles. A rendering step cannot disagree with the record.

Target profile, rendered at full size

Hover or focus a block to see its source. The link stays until you pick another.

Company Overview

Technology services provider to mid-market clients, Atlassian-first estate, recurring per-user contracts, no break-fix legacy

HQ’d in Leeds, UK
Second office in Manchester, opened 2024

42 FTEs
100% UK-based

Founded 1996

Verticals

Professional Services
Manufacturing & Engineering
Public Sector & Housing
Logistics & Distribution
Legal & Accountancy
Healthcare

Services

Recurring 64% · Projects 36%

Consultancy and delivery, day-rate and fixed-scope
Application support, per-seat, 3 year terms
Software licensing and renewals
Data and reporting build-outs
Training and enablement, classroom and remote
Projects: system rollouts, migrations, integrations

Named Clients

Partnerships & Accreditations

Financials & Ownership

Revenue (£m)EBITDA (£m)

9.6

1.4

FY23

10.8

1.7

FY24

12.4

2.1

FY25

13.9

2.4

FY26E

Companies House filed accounts to FY25. FY26 estimate, flagged.

£12.4m revenue, £2.1m EBITDA (FY25)9% revenue CAGR, margin steady as the consultancy mix grows.

Ownership & Equity

███████████████ (Founder, CEO) 48%; ███████████ (Technical Director) 31%. No institutional capital, no debt on the equity.

EMI pool of 21% across 14 senior staff, vested on a change of control. Ordinary shares only, no preference.

Key Management

███████████████ · Founder & CEO (29 years)
███████████ · Technical Director (9 years)
████████████ · Head of Delivery (16 years)

Adviser Insights

Founder is 58 and has raised succession unprompted. No adviser appointed, so genuinely off-market. Expectation 7 to 8x.

Sources: Companies House, vendor partner directories, company website

Neutral advisory house: teal on white, hairline rules, no firm mark, narrative column leading.

50 tailored letters from one template

Every letter differs in substance rather than in the name field: mandate framing, acquirer profile, and the reason this specific company was approached. Any language, translated in full. It drafts, a person sends.

Approach letter, 1 template to 50 tailored pages

Kingsmere Partners Limited

18 Fenwick Yard

London EC2A 4NE

Telephone: +44 (0) 20 7946 0431

Strictly Private & Confidential

████████████████ Limited ██████████████████ Exeter ███████ United Kingdom

18/03/2026

Subject: Trade Acquisition

Dear ██████,

We are writing in connection with an exclusive buy-side mandate on which Kingsmere Partners is acting as adviser to a leading global technology services group, with revenues above £1bn, currently making significant acquisition investments across the UK in cloud platform, data, workflow and integration services.

Our client has asked us to approach █████████ specifically. Their stated intent is to partner for the long term with founder-led businesses, preserving brand, culture and leadership autonomy while supporting growth through access to capital, talent and a wider ecosystem. What drew them to █████████ in particular is the technology services base you have built across the south west and south Wales on recurring per-user contracts, and the Atlassian Solution Partner designations behind it, which we confirmed in the vendor's own partner directory rather than taking from your website.

The purpose of this letter is only to establish whether there is mutual interest in a conversation. We would welcome an early discussion, under mutual non-disclosure, in which we can set out our client's identity and their proposition to you.

By way of background: Kingsmere Partners advises service and technology companies on both buy-side and sell-side mandates, and supports technologiedienste businesses through inorganic growth. Among the people who would be involved:

Our partner for UK technology services, who has spent 18 years in the enterprise software channel and has sat on both sides of a transaction in this market.
Our co-founder, a seasoned entrepreneur with over 20 years in technology and management consulting, who led two sales of his own companies to listed acquirers.
Our managing director, with 28 years across the human capital, outsourcing and technology services sector, including executive leadership at two international groups.

We work with a deliberately small number of clients in this sector, which is what allows us to be specific rather than general when we approach a business like yours. In the last two years we have advised a listed systems integrator on five UK consultancy acquisitions and a digital engineering group on two data and CRM acquisitions, both programmes in the same part of the market as yours.

As a first step we would suggest an informal conversation, with no obligation on either side, in which we can name our client and explain why they see █████████ as complementary to what they are building. If the timing is wrong, telling us so is a perfectly good outcome and we will not press.

Best regards,

Alexander Rowe Partner, Technology Services

Merge fields, hover to locate

Page count asserted at 1, output swept for leftover placeholders.
The whole letter translates, closing line included.
A second pass reviews the translation before a partner sees it.
Nothing in a tailored clause is written that is not in the record.

What the whole stack costs to run

A model seat and an enrichment line: £4,800 a year across 15 mandates. One seat carries 15, so the bill steps rather than scaling. It takes 41% of the analyst work off a mandate, which is 2 analysts back on a desk of 5.

What the stack releases, on your own numbers

Modules14/14

Buy-side and sell-side modules apply to their own mandates. Coverage is weighted by the book's mix.

Your desk

Analysts on the desk5

Live mandates15

Share buy-side60%

Analyst time that is mechanical70%

Mandates reaching completion60%

Average success fee£300k

Loaded analyst cost£95k

456: days
2.1: FTE
59%: covered

Fee capacity unlocked, a year

£1.1m

6.2 more mandates the desk can carry, at 60% reaching completion and £300k a completed deal.

41%

of analyst work on a mandate removed

2.1 FTE

of analyst time released

£197k

of salary cost released

41×

salary released per £1 of software

How that is arrived at

5 analysts × 220 days = 1100 analyst days on the desk, or 73 per mandate across 15.
70% of that is mechanical rather than judgement, and the modules running cover 59% of it, weighted for a 60% buy-side book.
456 days released = 2.1 analysts, which is 6.2 more mandates at 73 days each.
60% complete and pay £300k, so £1.1m of fee capacity.

What that costs to run

1 model seat at £200 a month: £2k
Enrichment and email verification: £2k
Total, a year: £5k
Per mandate: £320

One seat carries 15 mandates, so the bill steps rather than scaling, and the cost per mandate falls as the desk grows. Vendor directories run £600 to £1,000 a month and sit outside this: the desk already pays for them as a data source, and this runs on top.

On the recorded batch, 2,400 candidates went through the first pass and the 500 survivors took 7 evidence passes each. Passes run across the universe at once, so a wider thesis costs the same as a narrow one.

Where these numbers come from

7 analyst days to build a longlist. PCB's own figure for a properly researched longlist.
IM drafting, 3 weeks. Published CIM timelines run 2 to 4 weeks of drafting, with data gathering on top. Source
Commercial DD, 3 weeks to 1. A global PE firm cut initial contract and financial review from three weeks to four days with agents, and took document coverage from 60% to 100%. Source
Mid-market diligence over 6 weeks. Standard mid-market timeline: data room in week 1, functional reviews weeks 2 to 3, synthesis week 5. Source
£300,000 average success fee. Lower-mid-market fees run 4% to 8% of deal value with minimums of £50k to £150k. £300k is a mid-single-digit percentage on a £6m to £8m deal. Source
£95,000 loaded analyst cost. UK analyst total compensation runs £84k to £165k. £95k is the low end plus employer NI, pension and overhead. Source
70% mechanical, 60% covered, 60% of mandates completing. PCB's own figures. Set your own above and the answer moves with them.
Running cost. One model seat carries about 15 mandates at £200 a month, plus £200 a month for enrichment and email verification. Vendor directories run £600 to £1,000 a month and the firm already pays for them, so they sit outside this.

The fortnightly client update

Same record, same render path. The profile slide is the sheet above, dropped into the deck without being redrawn. Most of a morning, gone.

Fortnightly client update

1 / 8

Client check-in

Buy-side mandate, UK and Ireland technology services

Prepared for the acquirer

18 March 2026 · Strictly private & confidential

Fortnightly

Client update 18 March 2026

Pipeline

Summary of shortlisted targets

24 companies carried into outreach across technology services, cloud and data, and security. Counts move at every checkpoint.

Shortlisted

Across 3 capability archetypes

Tier 1

Meeting held or scheduled

Tier 2

Approached, awaiting reply

Qualified out

Kept on the deck with the reason

Engagement

Targets engaged with the client

Target	Status	Client view	Target view	Next
█████████████████	Second meeting held	Strong cultural fit. Wants to understand delivery utilisation before moving to indicative terms.	Open to a deal in the next 12 to 18 months. Founder wants a role post-completion.	Share indicative structure. Follow up on FY26 forecast.
██████████	First meeting held	Regulated client base is attractive. Wants a second look at the support book.	Cautious. Declined a trade approach 18 months ago on price.	Arrange technical session with the client's CTO.
████████████████	Intro call held	Delivery coverage fills a real gap in the south west.	CEO engaged. Two non-operational family shareholders to persuade.	Direct approach to the CEO ahead of the wider shareholder group.
████████████████	Second meeting held	consultancy practice is stronger than the size suggests. Wants the delivery team retained.	Founder open in principle, wants to understand earn-out mechanics first.	Model an earn-out structure against FY26 forecast.
████████████████	Intro call held	Training practice is the draw. Margin needs testing.	Interested, no timetable. Board meets in May.	Re-approach after the May board.
█████████████	First meeting held	Overlaps the existing estate more than expected. Consolidation case is real.	Two founders, one keen and one not. Needs handling.	Separate conversation with the second founder.

Engagement

Targets engaged with Kingsmere

Target	Status	Client view	Target view	Next
██████████████████	Qualification call held	Not yet shared with the client.	EOT structure makes a sale complex. Trustee approval required.	Confirm trustee appetite before taking to the client.
██████████████████	Qualification call held	Not yet shared with the client.	Interested. Public sector framework exposure to be checked.	Verify framework transferability, then present.

Qualified out

Targets recently qualified out

Names stay on the deck with the reason attached. Deleting one is how it gets re-approached in 6 weeks by someone who was not in the room.

Target	Status	Reason
███████████████	Out	Institutional backing since 2022. Outside the ownership gate.
████████████████	Out	410 FTE. Above the size band.
█████████████████	Out	Sub-scale at 17 FTE. Partner claim did not verify in the vendor directory.
████████████████	Out	Sponsor-owned. Approached by another adviser in Q4.

Sell-side

The same deck, sell-side

The same skeleton with the arrows reversed. Buyers rather than targets, approach status rather than engagement, and the reason a buyer was set aside kept on the page for exactly the reason a qualified-out target is.

Buyer	Type	Status	Position
██████████████████	Trade	NDA signed	Bought twice in this space in 18 months. Management meeting requested for week of 24th.
██████████████████	Sponsor	IM released	Fund IV, mid-programme. Focused on the recurring share and contract terms. Questions submitted.
██████████████████	Trade	Approached	Strategic fit on paper, no transaction history since 2019. Second approach through a warmer route.
█████████████████	Sponsor	Set aside	Portfolio company competes with the client's largest account. Conflict raised and accepted.
█████████████████	Trade	NDA signed	Acquisitive in adjacent verticals. Wants the security practice specifically.
████████████████	Sponsor	Declined	Below their minimum cheque size. Asked to be kept on for the next process.

Company Overview

Technology services provider to mid-market clients, Atlassian-first estate, recurring per-user contracts, no break-fix legacy

HQ’d in Leeds, UK
Second office in Manchester, opened 2024

42 FTEs
100% UK-based

Founded 1996