The AI tech stack for search funds and ETA searchers
Skills for a search fund or self-funded acquirer, grouped by where your deal sits — from the first broker email to the signed LOI.
6 of these 17 are built specifically for acquisition work — the rest are general support.
Sourcing and outreach
Building the list of targets and working it — the broker emails, the cold outreach, and the inbox that holds it all together.
Local Lead Prospector
Assembles an outreach list of local businesses from an industry + region pair for SDRs. Returns a CSV with name, category, address, phone, website, rating, and review count, plus a markdown summary. Listing data only, no decision-maker names. Google Places API (New) is the preferred path; a Playwright scrape exists as an opt-in fallback because scraping Google Maps is against Google's Terms of Service.
You'll need: An industry, a region, and a Google Maps API key
Lead Research Assistant
Research and qualify leads — find contact info, company details, and personalization angles
You'll need: A lead or company name to research
Email Sequence
Design and write multi-step email sequences — onboarding, nurture, sales, and re-engagement flows
You'll need: A sequence type and audience, like a welcome series
Email Drafter
Drafts professional emails from a quick brief — the right tone, length, and structure every time
You'll need: Who you're emailing and the core message
Gmail
Read, search, draft, and manage Gmail email
You'll need: A connected Gmail account
Meeting Scheduler
Finds the best meeting time across calendars, drafts the invite, and sends it — all in one flow
You'll need: Who to meet, how long, and a connected calendar
Screening the deal
Deciding fast whether a deal is worth an evening — before it earns a full diligence pass.
Research Brief
Turns any topic into a structured research brief: background, key players, what's contested, and a short reading list. Get up to speed fast before a meeting.
You'll need: A topic or market to get briefed on
Competitor Intel
Researches competitors in real-time — positioning, pricing, recent moves, strengths, and gaps
You'll need: A competitor name and a connected search tool
Meeting Memo
Turns a meeting transcript into circulate-ready notes in your team's standard format, carries forward open action items, and flags missing owners rather than guessing.
You'll need: A call transcript, plus your memo template if you have one
Meeting Notes Distiller
Turns raw meeting notes or transcripts into clean summaries with decisions, action items, and owners
You'll need: Raw meeting notes or a transcript
Diligence
Reading the numbers and the paper on the one deal that cleared screening.
Buy-Side Due Diligence
Runs systematic buy-side due diligence on a private acquisition: normalizes EBITDA, stress-tests the seller's story, and turns red flags into valuation hits.
You'll need: A CIM or data room to run diligence on
Financial Model QA
Scan a financial model for formula errors and logic defects, and check scenario outputs after input changes. Cites the exact sheet and cell for every issue and never edits the model.
You'll need: A spreadsheet financial model to scan
Financial Pulse
Analyzes transaction data from any source to produce a categorized 30-day spending breakdown and 3 specific things to look into based on 60-day trends
You'll need: Two months of transactions, a CSV or connected bank
Contract Review
Review a vendor, customer, payor, or partner contract before sign-off. Extracts key terms with clause citations, flags risks ranked by severity, and drafts a decision-maker memo.
You'll need: A contract you're about to sign or renew
Vendor Contract Extraction
Extract key terms, risk provisions, cost obligations, renewal/termination clauses, and authorized user counts across a vendor portfolio into one risk-and-cost register.
You'll need: A set of vendor contracts to sweep
Investors and the LOI
Reporting to the backers funding the search, and drafting the paper that closes the deal.
Investor Update
Drafts a founder's monthly or quarterly update to investors and LPs, in the Elad Gil short or long format, from your tools or pasted material, for you to review and send
You'll need: Your metrics and wins, pasted or from a connector
Document Creator
Turns a short brief into a complete, professionally structured document: reports, proposals, executive memos, project briefs, and status updates, ready to send.
You'll need: A short brief on what you need written
Questions ETA searchers ask
What AI tools do search fund searchers use?
Mostly on the recurring parts of a search, not the deal judgment itself: sourcing and outreach, screening a deal before it eats your week, diligence once it is real, and the investor updates and LOI paperwork after. We've grouped skills into those 4 stages, so you can jump straight to the one that matches where your deal sits.
What is the best AI tool for an ETA searcher?
There isn't one — a search runs through 4 different stages, and the skill you need sourcing deals isn't the skill you need for diligence or an investor update. That's why we group skills by deal stage instead of picking one winner. Don't see a match for your deal? Build that skill yourself, or let us build it with you.
Nothing here matches your deal?
Most searches have a recurring job nothing off the shelf covers. You can build that skill yourself. The guide to building your own Claude skill walks through it start to finish. Or we can build it with you.
Have one built for your searchGet all 17 skills in one install