Maintained coverage of one vertical for acquisitive platforms and strategic buyers. The company map, the owner signals, and the questions that decide the price, all of it in hand before a letter of intent rather than after one.
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Source: Software Equity Group, Q2 2026 SaaS M&A and Public Market Report. The trailing-year count and the quarterly growth rate are different measures, labeled as such; SEG publishes no year-to-date 2026 figure. Industry count, IDC Industry Taxonomy and Worldwide ICT Spending Guide. Desk count and the three-seat cap are Capital Row policy, not published figures. Share figures are for Q2 2026; healthcare uses vertical SaaS deals as its denominator. Industry count: 28 major industries as classified by IDC. Research houses counting at this level report between 18 and 28, each stating the set is representative rather than exhaustive.
On average a sponsor sees one deal in five of the ones actually available inside its own stated market.
Where would your firm land?
177 private equity firms, each measured against the industries and deal sizes it says it covers. Coverage is the share of completed deals, with a private equity buyer and a sell-side adviser, that the firm actually saw. SPS / With Intelligence, Deal Origination Benchmark Report, LTM to 30 June 2025.
Seventy-five letters of intent that were signed and then collapsed. These are the reasons they collapsed, as reported, with earnings problems accounting for barely a fifth.
Origination and diligence are two separate events, run by different teams, months apart. By the time anyone looks properly the price is on the table and the leverage has already moved.
They are one process. The findings that normally surface in week six of exclusivity are on the record before the name reaches you, so you are pricing against them instead of renegotiating after them.
Axial, Dead Deal Report, 27 January 2026. Seventy-five broken letters of intent across eight firm types and eight industries. The percentages are separate reported categories and are not summed here.
Scarcity only means something when the conflict rules are credible. Ours are written down, and they are the reason a seat is worth holding rather than just hard to get.
Every mandate is separated from the others on the desk by target size, product, geography or strategic objective, agreed in writing before the first piece of work.
If two clients could reasonably pursue the same company under the same thesis, we do not accept the second mandate. Not managed, not disclosed and worked around. Declined.
Company-level findings, target pursuit and client strategy stay inside the mandate that paid for them. The map of the vertical is common. Everything past it is not.
Roughly what one buy-side team spends to get from a filtered list to a signed letter, on a single vertical.
Mapping, outreach, qualifying. The person is $135,000 to $253,000 loaded, and cannot run a process at the same time.
How long before a new hire knows which names are unbuyable and why, rather than adding them to the list again.
Partner time under exclusivity on a deal that dies, plus the diligence invoices already committed.
One vertical already mapped, three mandates, and the diligence view attached before the name reaches you.
Compensation range compiled by CT Acquisitions from Glassdoor data, August 2024, for a US M&A associate. Days under exclusivity from Axial, Dead Deal Report, January 2026. The ramp figure is an estimate, not a measurement.
Owners talk to us because of what we do not ask for. No company-level information reaches a buyer, and no introduction is made, without the owner's express permission.
Nothing is requested and nothing is uploaded. The read is built from a structured conversation about the business, its end market and its contracts. An owner who is eleven months from a decision is not handing anyone a data room, and should not be asked to.
No engagement letter, no exclusivity, no right of first refusal, and no claim on the business if it ever does transact. The read creates no obligation in either direction.
Not discounted, not credited against something later. Complimentary, because the read is how a vertical gets known, and the coverage is what gets paid for.
They can act on it, sit on it for three years, or hand it to a banker we will never work with. It is theirs to keep.
The one that actually earns the next call. Plenty of these businesses should not go to market this year, and the read says so when that is the answer. An owner who has been told to wait tells the other owners in the vertical, which is how a desk fills.
A desk is not a list of companies for sale. It is the year spent in a vertical before anyone went to market.
You can buy volume anywhere, and your competitors already have. What a desk changes is where in the cycle a name reaches you, and how much is already known about it when it does. Tell us the vertical and the mandate. If a desk is open and yours does not overlap the mandates already seated, we will send the coverage brief.
Discuss a mandateOne business day, read by a person. If your mandate overlaps a seat already taken, we will say so rather than take the meeting.
Three of these hold a desk at any time, and they are not one of each. The seats are chosen so the mandates do not overlap, which can be three sponsors at different sizes, or a sponsor, a strategic and a lender. The brief is written differently for each.
Tell us what you are working on and where you need clarity. We will respond to discuss fit and the next step.
Please do not send financial documents, PHI or confidential information here. Sensitive information moves through a controlled workspace, under a signed engagement letter.
Or write to the desk directly at team@thecapitalrow.com