Business Prospector golden pickaxe

The largest transfer of business ownership in history is underway.

“By 2035, roughly 6 million small and medium-size businesses will face ownership transitions.”

McKinsey & Company, The Great Ownership Transfer (2026) · up to $5 trillion in enterprise value

The silver tsunami is here: a generation of longtime owners is retiring, and most of their businesses will change hands off-market. By some estimates more than 90% of small businesses that sell are never publicly listed. Business Prospector uses advanced AI to analyze each business across dozens of signals from many public sources, scores how likely the owner is to sell, and preps your first conversation. The great wealth transfer goes to the buyers who knock first.

Start prospecting free See how it works

Free account · no card required

The funnel

Free signals find every candidate.
Deep AI is spent only on the best.

01

Find every business

Pick any trade and any town, or sweep everything at once. Prospector pulls every candidate from OpenStreetMap, Google, and Yelp, deduplicates them, and banks them forever — ranking tens of thousands of businesses in a single query.

cost per business: ~$0
02

Score every business

Advanced AI scores every business 0 to 100 for sell-propensity, weighing dozens of signals from many sources: business age, website staleness, reputation quality, contactability, and more. Chains and franchises get filtered out.

cost per business: ~$0
03

Deep-dive the best

Top candidates get the deep-AI treatment: it reads state registry records, employee counts, and firmographics into a full acquisition dossier — then drafts personalized outreach.

spent only on winners
04

Reach out at scale

Turn dossiers into first contact: batch-send personalized emails or launch AI phone calls across a whole list at once. Every message is yours to review, and nothing goes out without your click.

Pro: email · Ultra: AI calls

The signals

What a motivated seller looks like from the outside

Business age

Registry filings, "since 1989" on the homepage, copyright ranges. Owner tenure is the strongest retirement predictor there is.

Digital staleness

Copyright frozen years ago, no HTTPS, not mobile friendly, DIY site builders. A checked-out web presence often means a checked-out owner.

Reputation quality

You want a great business whose owner is winding down, not a business in decline. Strong ratings across many reviews raise the score; weak ratings sink it.

Registry records

Secretary of State registration dates, entity status, and registered agents corroborate age and surface the actual owner's name.

Team size

The 5 to 50 employee sweet spot: big enough to run without the owner on the truck, small enough to buy without a fund.

Contactability

Phones and emails scraped from public pages, so a promising dossier turns into a conversation instead of a dead end.

Who it's for

Built for buyers who do their own hunting

Searchers & ETA buyers

Self-funded and traditional searchers sourcing their one great business. The institutional tools start at $20k a year and ignore your size range. This one starts free.

Holding companies

Serial acquirers building a portfolio of boring, durable local businesses. Sweep whole metros by trade, bank every result, and work the top of the list every week.

Small PE & family offices

Analysts who need proprietary deal flow below the radar of the auction processes. Export, enrich, and feed your own pipeline.

Outreach

From dossier to first coffee

AI-drafted email · Pro
To owner@cascadecomfort.com
Subject A note from a private buyer, not a broker
Hi, my name is [YOUR NAME]. I am an individual buyer, not a broker, looking to own one great HVAC business in Everett for the long term.

Cascade Comfort has clearly been built with care since 1994, and the 4.8 star reputation speaks for itself...
Open in GmailSends from your own address. Nothing sends without your click.
AI phone call · Ultra
☏
Cascade Comfort Heating
warm, disclosed script · voicemail variant
"Hi, my name is [YOUR NAME]. I am a private buyer, not a broker, and I am calling about Cascade Comfort Heating..."
Place callOne click per call, never a blaster. You own list compliance.

FAQ

Fair questions

Where does the data come from?

Public sources: OpenStreetMap, Google and Yelp listings, the businesses' own public websites, and official business registries (US Secretary of State filings). Prospector reads what anyone could read; it just reads a lot of it and remembers everything.

Which countries does it cover?

Anywhere the underlying signals exist. Discovery through OpenStreetMap and Google works worldwide, Yelp adds coverage in 30+ countries, and website age and staleness signals are global. US businesses additionally get Secretary of State registry data on deep dives.

Is this legal?

Discovery and scoring use public data. Cold acquisition email is legal in the US under CAN-SPAM on an opt-out basis: drafts include your postal address and honor opt-outs. For phone outreach, you are responsible for your call list and TCPA compliance, especially for mobile numbers. Outside the US, stricter opt-in rules can apply to cold email (GDPR and PECR in Europe, CASL in Canada); you are responsible for compliance in your jurisdiction. Prospector never sends anything without an explicit click from you.

What exactly is a deep dive?

One business gets the full treatment: registry lookup (registration date, status, registered agent), firmographic enrichment (team size), a fresh website scrape, an AI-written dossier with a sell-likelihood estimate, and a personalized outreach draft. It becomes part of your permanent history.

Do owners know they are listed?

Prospector only aggregates what is already public. Nothing is published about any business; dossiers are private to your account and meant to start a respectful, human conversation.

Can I cancel anytime?

Yes. Billing is handled by Stripe and you can cancel from your account page in two clicks. Your history stays readable on the free tier.

The next great business you buy is not for sale today.

Start prospecting it tonight. Free account, no card required.

Start prospecting free