Fundz for M&A Advisors and Investment Bankers

M&A advisors win mandates by being early. Early to a sell-side opportunity means being in front of the founder before they’ve hired a banker — usually 60-180 days before the first banker pitch, when distress / leadership-churn / sale-prep signals are starting to fire but no one’s called yet. Early to a buy-side mandate means surfacing on-thesis targets before the buyer’s internal corp dev has compiled them, and bringing precedent-transaction context the in-house team can’t match. Either path is a timing advantage; the surfaces and signal-weights are completely different.

Fundz gives you both. Pre-sale signals (multi-exit leadership clusters, 4.02 restatements, 2.04 covenant defaults, 3.01 delisting filings, 10-K/Q HIGH-risk DETERIORATING-trend ratings) and precedent-transaction patterns (filterable acquisitions feed + adjacency mining) surface in your daily feed in real time, anchored by the AI red-flag layer on every 8-K / 10-K / 10-Q.

Three sub-variants, three very different daily workflows. The signal-weight profile per sub-variant is at the bottom of the Signals section.

• Sell-side advisors (mid-market boutiques, founder-direct shops). Outbound-driven; success-fee comp model. You’re hunting pre-banker founders 60-180 days before they go to market. Your highest-conversion signals are private: multi-exit leadership clusters, 4.02 restatements, distress filings, “sat on Series B for 30+ months” funding-maturity patterns. The /executives Saved Filters and /sec-filings hot-leadership-churn sort are your two primary daily surfaces.
• Buy-side advisors + PE consultants. Mandate-driven; retainer + success fee. You’re building 200-400 company target lists per active buyer thesis and surfacing diligence-grade precedent transactions for valuation work. Your highest-conversion surface is /companies with the buyer’s thesis filters (industry + size_bucket + status + recent funding) saved + Pushed to HubSpot at sign-on. Your second surface is /acquisitions for adjacent-vertical precedent.
• Corporate development teams. Internal at acquirers; running structured target searches against board-approved M&A theses. Different goal: you’re not pitching, you’re monitoring. Your surfaces are /companies (thesis-saved + Push-to-HubSpot for pipeline), /acquisitions for competitor deal patterns, and 13F flows for “who’s positioning out of our space” context for the board deck.

Step 1: Configure Slack + email (5 min)

Visit /account/email-notifications and verify Daily Email Alerts is on. Then open /account?component=connectors and connect Slack — this is non-optional for M&A work. Toggle 8-K Executive Transitions ON and use the role-pill picker: pick CEO + CFO + COO for sell-side hunting (the 6-12 month sale-precursor signals); pick CFO + CEO for buy-side “acquired-company-integration-advisor” pings. Also enable Acquisitions (precedent transactions in real-time), Funding Rounds, Office Lease Permits (matched expansion at Favorites), and WARN notices (distress leading indicator, 60 days ahead of layoffs by federal law).

Step 2: Save the distress + sale-prep filter set (5 min)

Open /sec-filings and save the four 8-K item-number chips that drive M&A work end-to-end:

• item_number=2.04 — Default / covenant violation. Pre-restructure or pre-sale inflection.
• item_number=4.02 — Restatement of prior financials. Books being cleaned for a process.
• item_number=5.02 — Officer/director departure. CFO transitions specifically lead sales by 6-12 months.
• item_number=3.01 — Delisting. Public-to-private signal.

On the same /sec-filings page, turn on Sort: Hot leadership churn and the Multi-exit shakeups toggle — clustering 2+ exec exits at the same org in 90 days is the closest proxy to “3+ departures”-pattern distress. Save the URL as a bookmark; filter state rides in the URL.

Step 3: Save the role-specific exec movement view (5 min)

Open /executives and stack Role = Chief Financial Officer + Chief Executive Officer (multi-select; full taxonomy, not just acronym chips) + your sector Industry + Location. Save in My Saved Filters with Manage Email Summary for These Filters ON. This is the canonical role-specific exec-tracking surface and the Slack 8-K toggle’s browse companion. Buy-side: the same surface scoped to the buyer’s vertical surfaces the “new CFO arrived 30 days ago = integration / value-creation advisory wedge” pattern.

Step 4: Build per-mandate Watchlists + Push to HubSpot (15 min)

Buy-side advisory needs 200-400 watched companies per active mandate. Build each one with /companies filters (industry + size_bucket + status=“recently acquired” / “taken private” / null + recent funding chip), then either Favorite individually or use the bulk Push to HubSpot button (1K records/push monthly, 10K annual) to load the buyer thesis straight into CRM at engagement kickoff. Sell-side: 100-200 watched companies in your sector at the size band you cover. Open /watchlist once the list is built to confirm per-org alert toggles.

Fundz is a signal-intelligence platform: real-time funding, executive hires and departures, completed and announced M&A, contracts, product launches, and SEC filings, paired with verified investor profiles, portfolio comparison, an RIA database, and SEC AI red-flag analysis on every 10-K, 10-Q, and 8-K. Strategic users get 200 mobile direct dials per month plus Search Brief generation on any company.