Situation
An acquisition thesis only becomes useful when it can identify businesses worth investigating. A list of companies is a starting point. The commercial work is deciding which characteristics matter, what evidence supports the assessment, and what should happen before approaching an owner or committing further diligence spend.
I worked on a sourcing approach for established, owner-managed businesses, connecting investment criteria with company research, ownership information, financial assessment and outreach. The programme combined commercial and analytical design with implementation by technical collaborators.
By August 2026, the work included a staged sourcing implementation and detailed writeups explaining its behaviour. The emphasis was consistent assessment: understand why a company merits attention before deciding how much further research and commercial effort to commit.
What I did
I worked on the acquisition thesis, screening logic, financial assessment and the workflow around progressing a target. The central question was how to translate an investment idea into consistent research decisions without allowing a score to conceal the evidence or uncertainty behind it.
The sourcing process begins with public company-register information. A defined set of eligibility rules establishes the research universe. Those rules are separate from the later ranking: a company does not quietly disappear because a richer source becomes unavailable or a financial score changes.
Pinned source snapshots and a defined assessment date make that initial screening reproducible. The implementation records where companies fall out of the screening process, so a changed result can be traced to a changed input or rule. This matters commercially because a sourcing universe should reflect a deliberate mandate, rather than incidental behaviour in a script.
Ownership research adds another dimension. Directors, beneficial ownership and controlling entities help distinguish a superficially attractive company from a business whose ownership structure requires a different conversation. The work connects those facts to the practical question of who controls the opportunity and what a succession discussion might involve.
The financial stages collect filed accounts and turn them into structured information for assessment. The approach considers financial strength, trends and the quality of the evidence available. Missing information remains visible. A number derived from incomplete accounts should not look as dependable as one supported by a fuller record.
Paid credit enrichment comes later, for a selected research group. That sequencing makes the commercial use of data explicit: use broad public information to establish and investigate the universe, then spend selectively where further evidence could affect the next decision.
The implementation keeps the financial assessment and the credit assessment distinct before combining them. It also records disagreements between sources for human investigation. Two providers apparently describing the same company can differ because they refer to different periods, interpret an account differently or contain an extraction error. Averaging the answers would hide the question that needs answering.
I authored supporting material around the thesis, sourcing workflow, diligence, stakeholder picture and acquisition communications. This connects the research pipeline to requests for information, conversations and the financial appraisal of a potential transaction.
The engineering was collaborative. My contribution spans the commercial criteria, analytical design and working material; technical collaborators implemented and refined the scripts. The result reflects that combination of investment reasoning and software development.
Outcome
The August record contains a staged implementation covering cohort construction, ownership research, account collection, financial assessment, selective enrichment and ranking. The accompanying writeups explain the purpose, inputs, outputs and limits of each stage, with links to the source code.
This moved the approach beyond a thesis and a collection of research tools into an implemented sequence. The result described here is the research capability documented in August; transaction decisions and subsequent operating results are separate questions.
The practical result is a clearer path from acquisition criteria to a researched opportunity. A reviewer can see why a company entered the process, what the evidence says, where uncertainty remains and what further work is warranted before a commercial approach.
What it proves
This case demonstrates the ability to connect investment strategy, financial analysis and systematic origination. I can translate a thesis into research questions and working criteria, then work with technical collaborators to make that approach repeatable.
The judgement lies in deciding what deserves attention, what evidence is sufficient for the next step, and where human investigation should replace automated confidence.