About the firm

Docket helps private equity firms understand which private companies meet their acquisition criteria, what the public record supports, and which questions still need an answer. The work begins with a mandate and ends with a docket your team can inspect, challenge, and export.

The research behind a target list

Proprietary origination asks a deal team to do several different jobs at once: define a market, identify its companies, distinguish similar names, understand business models, and decide whom to approach. A list of company names solves only part of that problem. Its usefulness depends on the research behind each record.

A website may describe an activity without establishing its revenue contribution. A directory may point to an old trading name. An ownership claim may outlive the transaction that changed it. Docket treats those as research questions, with evidence requirements, rather than as blanks to fill with plausible text.

We serve private equity firms and their deal teams and operating partners. The acquisition criteria belong to the client. Docket organizes the investigation around those criteria, whether the starting point is an existing spreadsheet or a market that still needs to be mapped.

An answer should survive inspection

Every accepted research field needs a supporting quotation from a retained page. A polished summary is useful only if a reviewer can find the statement beneath it. Typed answers make records comparable; the quotation makes the answer challengeable. Sources and dates supply context for deciding whether the answer remains useful.

Missing evidence stays missing. A company that does not publish its revenue mix does not acquire a precise revenue split because the screening model needs one. A statement about services offered does not establish contract duration. An unanswered question can be the most useful part of the record when it defines the next diligence conversation.

The same discipline applies to our published work. We publish findings that cut against the pitch, discuss limits in public data, and separate research hypotheses from established facts. The research library explains the reasoning behind the method; evidence standards sets out what makes a claim usable.

Three distinct passes

Triage

Resolves company identity before research is paid for, removes duplicates and wrong-site records, and asks disqualifying questions first.

Scout

Answers the client’s criteria as typed values from fixed answer lists, quoting a retained source page verbatim for each accepted finding.

Audit

Re-reads the collected material with every fetch tool denied, settles contradictions, strikes unquotable findings, and leaves unresolved gaps visible.

The separation matters. Collection and review have different jobs. Audit cannot rescue an unsupported answer by quietly finding a new source: it must judge the retained evidence. Your team can then distinguish an accepted answer, a struck finding, and a question that the public record did not settle.

How the work is done

The work is divided by function rather than by headcount, and we do not publish team names or sizes on this site. Four functions carry a mandate from criteria to handover.

Research agents

Triage, Scout, and Audit do the collection and the first review, each with a separate job and separate tool access.

Analyst review

On Managed engagements an analyst reads the records, reviews the criteria with the client each week, and turns open questions into defined next steps.

Data engineering

Maintains the platform, the per-client databases, the retained source pages, and the exports.

Compliance review of outreach

Before optional outreach, messaging and targets are checked against the agreed geography, channels, exclusions, and applicable rules, then go to the client for approval.

Outcomes we can and cannot disclose

A client’s mandate, target list, and results are confidential, and a firm that is acquiring in a sector has good reason not to be named. For that reason this site does not name clients, describe their engagements, or show their data. The example company on the home page and the demonstration workspace are illustrative, and so is the sample docket, which is labelled as fictional companies throughout.

We also do not publish counts of deals, meetings, or returns. Research can show which companies meet a firm’s criteria and what the record says about them; whether a conversation becomes a transaction depends on the owner, the price, and diligence that are not ours to claim. Where a client permits an anonymised outcome to be described, we will publish it with that permission stated. Until then, the best evidence we can offer is the record itself: ask for the first ten targets and judge it.

Choose who runs the work

Self-serve puts the target list, research criteria, runs, and results in your hands. Managed delivery adds a dedicated analyst and a weekly criteria review. Both use the same underlying evidence standard. Optional email, LinkedIn, and phone outreach follows client approval of the messaging and each target before contact.

Your docket is held in a separate database. You own your data and can export to CSV or Excel at any time. Target lists and criteria are confidential; they are not pooled into a shared prospect list or resold. The trust page explains handling and the questions to raise before a mandate begins.

The first ten targets are researched free, so the initial review can focus on the evidence and on how well the questions express your mandate. Explore the live demo or describe your mandate to begin.