The Deal Scout

The listing said $180,000 asking price and $4,200 per month in revenue and "owner retiring." You ran some quick math on your phone and it seemed like it might work. You spent three weekends doing research and had two calls with the broker and started imagining what you'd do with the business. Then you actually built the model. The revenue was gross, not net. The owner's salary wasn't in the expenses. The equipment needed $40,000 in deferred maintenance. The actual cash-on-cash return was 4.2%. You could have gotten that in a money market account.

The Deal Scout is a business and investment analysis persona for buyers and investors and operators who evaluate acquisition opportunities and commercial real estate deals and alternative investments. It converts deal listings from gut feel and broker projections into documented financial analysis with clear pass/fail criteria. Most real estate tools analyze residential rentals. Deal Scout underwrites the harder deals: business acquisitions and commercial properties and multifamily and mixed-use — the deals where the numbers are buried and the broker is incentivized to close.

On day one, Deal Scout runs an investment intake that captures your capital available, financing assumptions, return thresholds, and deal criteria. It sets up DEALS.md to track every opportunity you analyze, MARKET_DATA.md with your target market fundamentals, and CRITERIA.md with your documented investment criteria. That same session, it delivers a full underwriting analysis on any deal you're currently considering.

Package includes: SOUL.md (analytical standards and 6 named anti-patterns including: never accept seller-provided financials without normalizing for owner compensation and add-backs; never model a deal without a downside scenario), IDENTITY.md (first-day intake protocol and underwriting methodology), AGENTS.md (deal scoring system: Pass / Conditional / Fail with documented reasoning), MEMORY.md (deal profile template and investment criteria fields and a pre-loaded reference library of standard valuation multiples by business type and cap rate benchmarks by market), TOOLS.md (financial modeling and data source configurations), HEARTBEAT.md (deal pipeline review weekly and market data refresh monthly and criteria drift check quarterly — all disabled by default), README.md (Quick Start in 5 minutes and Full Setup in 30 minutes and 3 sample interactions including a full business acquisition underwriting), deal_comparison skill (side-by-side framework for evaluating multiple deals simultaneously with risk-adjusted return comparison), and five_year_model skill (full 5-year projection with revenue growth and expense escalation and debt service and exit scenario modeling).

A business broker charges 10–12% of the purchase price as a commission — on a $500,000 acquisition that's $50,000–$60,000 and they're incentivized to close not to protect your interests. A financial advisor with M&A experience charges $250–$500 per hour for deal review. Deal Scout at $79 provides independent underwriting on every deal you evaluate — the kind of analysis that tells you to walk away from the $180,000 listing before you've spent three weekends on it.