I would like to ask for experience shares (not advice, only real experiences please!) on managing investors and potential investors in the weeks and days immediately to signing/closing a deal (for the avoidance of doubt: not the fundraise for the search but for the actual ETA/Search Fund deal). More and more investors are joining/crowding the space, some experienced with Search Funds, some more experienced in PE, others w/o any small-cap investing experience at all, and others with lots of capital to deploy (especially the institutional funds out there). This creates quite a diverse stakeholder group with potentially diverging agendas and interests.

An illustration of this, as an fictious example: The situation that seems to often arise is that: at first, indications are given to invest let's say 500k USD by a given example investor. This is accompanied by lots of questions re the deal and the DD. As the conversation progresses, said example investor reduces her interest to 150k USD and continues to send over and want to discuss lots of questions re deal and the DD. Then investor increases her interest to a higher amount, and continues with lots of questions (some of these are actually constructive, many others however are more "nice to know" rather than "need to know"). This up and down continues, and said investor also connects with other investors and thereby creates quite a volatile and stressful situation for the searcher(s), who actually wants to close in on a deal under tight timeline.

To all those who have done deals before, how did you manage your investors in the weeks before your deal? Did you do weekly/bi-weekly "all investors" calls/zooms? did you send weekly/bi-weekly updates to everyone? did you focus on just a few investors mainly (the larger ones in your search fund/ETA? the more experienced ones? everyone equally? the institutional ones?)? Curious to hear from your experiences! Thank you for sharing to the community!