For buyersMandate scoping
Before we run a mandate, we scope it.
Tell us the buy box — industry, geography, size, owner profile — and we'll walk you through how we'd scope it the way our own sourcing team does: the data-source families that fit, a rough public-data universe, the filters that narrow it, how reachable the owners are, and a realistic timeline.
Buy boxSample
- Industry
- HVAC · NAICS 238220
- Geography
- Southeast US
- Size
- $1M to $3M EBITDA
- Owner profile
- Near retirement
Four fields. Everything below is scoped against this.
01The buy box
Four questions set the scope.
This is the same intake a mandate starts from today, whether you send it to a partner directly or describe it to the tool we're building.
Industry
A category or a NAICS code
Free text works. A specific category narrows the universe faster than a broad one.
Geography
A state, a region, or a metro
"Southeast" and "Texas" both work. Wider geography, wider and less confident estimate.
Size
An EBITDA or revenue range
The band that defines a company worth calling, not a single number.
Owner profile
Near retirement, absentee, distressed, or no preference
Optional. Changes the reachability and timeline read, not the universe math.
02How we scope it
The same five questions our sourcing team answers before accepting a mandate.
Each one is a real step in how Axia scopes work today, not a generic framework written for this page.
- Source families
- Which registries fit
- Licensing boards, franchise filings, state and county records — the families that touch your category, not the 331 we actually run.
- Universe estimate
- A rough business count
- Pulled from public counts (Census, BLS). A range, always labeled rough, never a company list.
- Filters
- What narrows it
- Size band, geography, owner signal, deal-structure fit — the funnel a real mandate applies.
- Reachability
- How findable the owners are
- A directional read: licensing-board categories carry a named owner; franchise-only categories are slower.
- Timeline
- A realistic build-out
- Framed the way we'd tell a client today — a ramp period, not an instant list.
03Process, not data
This shows how we'd scope your mandate. It never shows our data.
No proprietary contact lists, no company names, no teaser lists. A scope is Axia's process, described plainly — not a cut of the dataset we actually run.
What a scope showsEvery time
- Source families
- Named, with what each one yields
- Universe size
- A rough public-data range, cited
- Narrowing logic
- The filters a mandate would apply
- Reachability & timeline
- Axia's own operating read
What a scope never showsNo exceptions
- Company names
- Never surfaced here
- Contact lists
- Never surfaced here
- Proprietary records
- Not a data export
- A guaranteed deal
- Not a promise we make
04A mandate, scoped
One fictional buy box, walked through the scope end to end.
Scope walkthroughIllustrative
- Buy box submittedHVAC · Southeast · $1M to $3M EBITDA · owner near retirement
- Industry classifiedNAICS 238220, contractor-licensing family
- Source families matchedState contractor licensing boards, county DBA filings
- Universe estimatedA rough public-record range for the category and region, cited to its source
- Filters appliedSize band, geography, and owner-profile signal narrow the range
- Reachability readLicensing-board categories carry a named owner — higher reachability
- Timeline estimatedA realistic range for first qualified conversations, not an instant number
Fictional buy box, used to illustrate the steps. Real estimates are built per mandate, not reused across buyers.
05Who this is for
Searchers, independent sponsors, and PE firms sourcing add-ons.
Same scope, same questions, whether you're building your first acquisition pipeline, scoping a mandate before you raise, or sizing an add-on category for a platform you already own. The questions below cover all three.
We're also building a conversational version of this scope — describe your buy box in a chat and get the same walkthrough back. It's in development now, not yet available to the public. Until it ships, send us your buy box directly and a partner will scope it with you.
Want us to run this mandate?
Send us your buy box. Inside fifteen business days of agreeing criteria, you get the counted universe, fixed in writing — then we start calling.