Siddwell: investment bank versus business broker.

A full exit, a majority sale that leaves you running the company, or a division that would be worth more on its own. Wall Street will not staff a company doing $1 million to $100 million in revenue. The call that gets returned is often a business broker.

The failure mode of a short list is simple. Two or three buyers, worked in sequence. A deal that dies in diligence, or a price set by whoever is still standing, because no one else was at the table. That is a description of the process, not a statistic about a closed transaction. This page does not add a deal count.

The mandate is sell-side M&A. The books are reviewed and the case a buyer will back is built. The map includes private equity, strategic acquirers, family offices, search funds, independent sponsors, and international buyers. They are taken out at once.

A banker owns the deal. Software does the repetitive work: research, the buyer list, first drafts, document chasing. The banker makes the calls, runs the negotiation, and holds the relationships. The buyer you already know is welcome. A neighbor, a competitor, a sponsor who has been calling for a year. They should have to beat the rest of the market, not replace it.

Software that drafts a teaser and emails a handful of buyers is the short-list model with a faster front end. The test is whether a banker is accountable for the negotiation, and whether the market was actually put in competition. What the software at this firm does, and what it does not do, is on the AI investment bank page.

If the company is a main-street business better served by a handful of local introductions, say so and hire that. If what you need is the market in one process, that is the sell-side mandate.

Brokering is also the word people use when they want a loan. That is not a sale. When the work is an acquisition, a building, equipment, working capital, a refinance, or a partner buyout, the mandate is capital advisory. How that differs from a business loan broker, including how brokers are usually paid, is on the capital advisor versus loan broker page. SBA financing is one lender path inside a raise, not a brokerage product.

A partner who wants out can be bought with debt, which is a partner buyout, or the company can be sold. If both sides want an outside buyer, you want the sale. If the people staying want to pay the people leaving, you want the financing.

Siddwell is an investment bank for privately held US companies doing about $1 million to $100 million in revenue. A banker owns the deal. Software does the volume: research, the list of buyers or lenders, first-draft materials, and document chasing. The calls, the negotiation, and the relationships stay with the banker.

Siddwell is not a lender, not a licensed loan broker, and not a business broker. Lenders fund loans. Buyers buy companies. If a direct introduction to SBA lenders is all you want, the SBA's Lender Match tool does that, and you apply with the lender.

Hire a business broker when a short list of introductions is the product you want. Hire sell-side coverage when the buyer market should have to compete. The two names get used as if they were one job. They are not.