If this was forwarded to you, subscribe here - I send two of these a week.
I keep having the same conversation twice a week.
Once with a sell-side banker. Once with a buy-side platform.
Both say they need help with "sourcing." Both describe the same frustration. Both are paying tens of thousands a year for data platforms that get them partway there. But when I ask what the output needs to look like, the conversations split completely.
The thing is - both sides are ultimately trying to reach the same physician founders. The sell-side bank wants to represent them. The buy-side platform wants to acquire them. And the team that shows up with better information is the team that wins the conversation.
Not because data closes deals. It doesn't. But because a banker who can reference a physician's specific competitive landscape, specific market dynamics, and specific practice trajectory in the first meeting earns trust faster than one who leads with credentials. And a corp dev lead who reaches out referencing something specific about the practice - service mix, local competitive environment, a market shift the physician is already feeling - gets a meeting. The one who sends a generic "we're interested in acquisitions in your area" gets deleted.
Physicians live and breathe their specialty every day. They don't need another market overview telling them what they already know. What catches their attention is when someone across the table knows details they didn't expect anyone outside their world to know. The competitive dynamics in their MSA. Which of their peers have already transacted. Where their market is headed in 12 months. The difference between "this is another banker" and "this person actually understands my practice" comes down to that level of specificity.
That's the edge. And right now, most teams on both sides of the table aren't building it.