How are people here managing deal flow during a search?

March 06, 2026

by a searcher from The University of Texas at Austin - Red McCombs School of Business in Dallas, TX, USA

Hi everyone, Over the past 2 years I’ve been working through an acquisition process and one thing that surprised me was how fragmented the tooling is for managing deal flow. Between sourcing opportunities, tracking broker conversations, organizing diligence, and keeping notes across dozens of companies, I found myself juggling spreadsheets, email threads, and random notes. It started getting messy pretty quickly. So I ended up building a lightweight internal tool to manage my deal pipeline end-to-end - essentially a simple workspace where I can track opportunities, conversations, scoring/prioritization, diligence items, and progress through the funnel. One feature that turned out to be particularly helpful is prioritization. When you’re looking at dozens (sometimes hundreds) of opportunities at once, it’s easy to spend time on the wrong deals. The tool lets me score opportunities across a few key criteria (size, industry fit, growth profile, deal complexity, etc.) so I can quickly prioritize which ones deserve deeper diligence. It started as something purely for my own process, but a few other searchers who saw it thought it might be useful more broadly. Before taking it further, I’m curious how others here manage deal flow during a search. For example: • Spreadsheet • CRM (HubSpot / Airtable / Pipedrive) • Notion / custom setup • Something else? And more importantly - how do you prioritize which deals to spend time on when you have a large pipeline? If anyone is open to trying what I built & sharing feedback, I’d be happy to give access. My goal is to make something that actually fits the workflow of searchers rather than generic CRM tools. I also recorded a quick 5-minute walkthrough here if anyone is curious what it looks like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3BQnK9agF0 Appreciate any thoughts or suggestions from the community. Hemanth

Reply by a professional
from University of Toronto in Toronto, ON, Canada

I agree with ^redacted‌ above. I don't think this is applicable to most searchers, more likely to smaller VC/PE firms or family offices that solicit and manage larger deal flows. Most searchers don't have a deal flow that is so large that it is confusing or difficult to manage, mainly because they don't have high-volume prospecting funnels. Those searchers who are struggling to manage "dozens of companies" have failed in one of the fundamental issues for searcher success: readily identify high-probability prospects and quickly move on from all the rest. Designing a 'screen' or filter to identify high-probability prospects isn't rocket science but it requires industry-specific knowledge and application, which is why industry-agnostic searches and searchers are generally less successful.

Reply by a searcher
from Northwestern University in Houston, TX, USA

This type of tool makes a lot of sense for smaller PE firms or family offices constantly looking at new deals, but if you are overwhelmed by deal flow as a searcher to the point of needing something beyond Excel or Notion, you're probably spending too much time on deals that are unlikely to close...learning how to quickly move on from deals is a valuable skill!

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