Siddwell: selling a company to private equity.

A private equity fund is capital built to buy and hold companies, usually for a period the fund has already promised its own investors. Some funds call the upper part of this revenue band, and sometimes the whole of it, the lower middle market. The revenue figures are more useful than the nickname. The client on a sale is the owner. The fund is a bidder.

Funds are not the only bidder. Strategic acquirers buy a competitor, a territory, or a capability. Family offices can hold past a fund's clock. Search funds buy one company to operate. Independent sponsors bring a deal and raise equity one transaction at a time. International buyers enter the US or extend a footprint. A process that calls only private equity is a shorter process than the one this firm runs.

The sale is sell-side M&A. The books are reviewed. The funds that buy companies of this size and this kind are mapped, and so are the buyers who are not funds. They are taken out together. Management meetings and diligence follow from that, not from a single lunch with the one fund that already knows the owner.

What you are selling changes who shows up. A full exit is one outcome. A majority sale, where you take liquidity and keep running the company, is another. A divestiture of a division is a third. Private equity buys all three, on different terms. A fund's debt package, its hold period, and what it needs you to do after closing are part of the bid. They are comparable only when other bids exist.

This is the opposite of a short-list brokerage. The comparison is investment bank versus business broker. Software builds the list and the first drafts. The banker runs the calls that set the price.

A fund that wants these companies names the mandate: the company, the size, the structure it will actually do. That call is how the firm learns what to send. You are not sorting everything in the office. When a company being sold fits, you are in the process, with the file. That is the network.

A number of funds in coverage is not stated, so none is claimed. The process diagram's buyer counts are marked illustrative. A fit is a fit against the box you named.

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.

Siddwell is not a private equity fund. It does not invest a committed fund into your company, and it does not advertise a portfolio. If the assignment is a raise rather than a sale, that is capital advisory. Debt so one owner can buy another is a partner buyout. Debt so you can buy a second company is acquisition financing. Selling to private equity is the sale.