A dealmaker’s guide to deal sourcing platforms

Deal sourcing drives your pipeline and fuels your firm’s growth. The more you can streamline your deal sourcing efforts, the more effectively you can find the right opportunities and the faster you can drive them across the finish line.

Facing increased pressure to deploy capital, yet stricter investment criteria, sourcing high-quality deals that strategically fit your thesis is critical to your firm’s success. Deal teams are doubling down on efficiency, with 50% of private capital dealmakers expecting to dedicate most of their time to sourcing new deals in 2025. 

Relying on siloed spreadsheets and LP rolodexes just isn’t enough anymore. You need a deal sourcing solution that’s designed to support the entire deal lifecycle and accelerate complex, longer-burning deals.

In this deal sourcing platform buyer’s guide, you’ll learn how the right technology keeps your firm ahead of the competition, how it can streamline the deal process, and features of some of the leading deal sourcing platforms for dealmakers. 

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Key takeaways

• Deal sourcing platforms are essential tools for private capital dealmakers.
• Firms should prioritize platforms that offer relationship intelligence, opportunity monitoring, growth signals, pipeline management, and automated data entry.
• Affinity Sourcing is a deal sourcing software purpose-built for private capital.

How the right deal sourcing platform gives your investment team a leg up

Sourcing the right opportunities can be one of the most challenging parts of dealmaking. It’s an important first step that shapes the rest of the dealmaking process. By combining automation, data, and relationship intelligence, deal sourcing software enables your team to make more informed deal decisions and act on opportunities faster.

Data analytics and market insights help firms turn deal signals into deal sources. Modern deal sourcing software improves deal flow by helping you identify promising opportunities faster. AI-driven relationship intelligence with enhanced data sets also makes it possible to instantly spot the warmest path to an introduction.

Let’s take a deeper look at how deal sourcing software can help venture capital and private equity teams win better deals.

Benefits of deal sourcing software for venture capital

Only an estimated 3-4% of evaluated deals make it across the finish line. With multiple firms vying for the top deals, the right software solution can be a sourcing differentiator for VC firms.

• Relationship insights can help venture capital firms bridge new connections that open the door to new potential deals, based on existing connections. 
• With many VC deals coming from within a firm’s network, sourcing software can help dealmakers stay on top of every relationship to s get into deals faster.
• Company and key contact insights help surface signals that indicate emerging fundraising and investment opportunities. 
• Find, engage, and prioritize a high number of opportunities more efficiently based on investment thesis and criteria. 

Benefits of deal sourcing software for private equity

Deal sourcing software is a core part of the private equity (PE) tech stack and enables private equity firms to target outreach activities more precisely. 

• Create deal alerts that flag opportunities based on acquisition preferences and broadcast buy-side mandates. 
• Enrich contact and company data, and research key stakeholders and portfolio companies so they can gain an edge when it comes time to identify quality opportunities.
• Maintain a complete history of deal history for streamlined due diligence.

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What to look for in a deal sourcing platform

Adapting workflows to a new software can be a heavy lift for busy deal teams. Adoption and buy-in are key to success, reinforcing the need for deal sourcing platforms that are purpose-built for private capital and solve blockers for dealmakers.

Look for features and functionality that help your deal teams with the following workflows:

Find new paths to deals using relationship intelligence 

Your firm’s existing network can be a well of opportunities. Look for software that helps your deal team assess their professional relationships and the relationships across your firm’s network. This helps dealmakers uncover warm introductions to high-potential companies to build new relationships and win more deals.

Relationship intelligence can also help your team track and manage the contacts they’re already connected with. Ideally, your deal sourcing software has automations that capture and centralize your firm’s network without manual effort.

Discover emerging trends to surface relevant opportunities

Accessing top deals can be competitive. Getting outreach timing right can be the difference between a missed opportunity and a closed deal. Look for a deal sourcing software that enriches your existing data with growth signals and centralizes sourcing insights, so you can uncover the best deals first and engage right when momentum picks up. 

Stay on top of every deal without chasing updates

Deal sourcing is just the first step to a closed deal. Look for a deal sourcing platform that includes intuitive pipeline management tools with flexible workflows. Your team should know the status of every deal, have progress metrics at hand, and be able to capture every interaction and activity—without leaving your deal sourcing software.

Software designed for private capital firms often includes pipeline management features that simplify deal management from origination to close. Even better if it seamlessly integrates with your CRM.

Save hours of manual data entry with automation

Your deal team’s time is best spent building relationships and shepherding deals—not on manual data entry. But in a typical year, dealmakers spend hundreds of hours doing just that. 

Look for automated data capture features that capture and enrich data without manual effort—and provide actionable insights that can accelerate dealmaking.

6 top deal sourcing platforms for dealmakers (2025)

Let’s dive into some of the leading deal sourcing platforms for private capital dealmakers. 

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Affinity Sourcing

Affinity is a deal sourcing software and CRM that helps firms connect with high-potential investment opportunities at the right time.

For private capital firms, the deal origination process is complex, the cycle can be long, and relationships make all the difference. Affinity Sourcing draws on the strength of every relationship in your firm’s network and enriched investment data to find, monitor, and engage high-potential deals more effectively. 

Key features

• Sourcing Screeners: Quickly surface growing, investment-relevant companies and use filters, smart tags, and search capabilities to pinpoint companies that align with your unique thesis.
• Growth signals: Gain a first-mover advantage through signal-driven sourcing workflows that track growth indicators like team expansion, web traffic surges, and recent funding.
• Customizable scoring: Make more-informed decisions faster with tailored scoring methods that align with your firm’s specific investing priorities, making it easier to assess whether a prospect fits your portfolio.
• Automated watchlists: Keep an eye on promising companies with watchlists that automatically alert you to key inflection points, which help time your outreach perfectly for more impactful engagement.
• Real-time, automated data enrichment: Your team’s contacts and deal activity data are automatically enriched with leading third-party data sources, proprietary Affinity algorithms, and user-generated data.
• Warm introduction paths: Affinity analyzes your team’s network and all the data points within it to surface the warmest introduction paths.
• Industry Insights: Affinity company profiles feature AI-driven information about competing and related companies, which cuts down on deal sourcing and due diligence workflows.
• Employee Growth Insights: Your team can cut down on back-and-forth with founders by easily accessing data on prospect company headcount growth and churn in Affinity company profiles.

Pros

• Built for private capital workflows: Affinity Sourcing is purpose-built for private capital firms. Product and support teams have an understanding of nuances in private capital dealmaking, with features designed specifically to reduce inefficiencies across sourcing, relationship tracking, and pipeline management

• CRM integration: Affinity Sourcing is integrated directly in your Affinity CRM, so you can tap into your relationships to make the most of your deal pipeline without needing additional software.
• Tech stack integrations Affinity connects with the most popular capital markets software tools, including Salesforce, Slack, Google Drive, Mailchimp, and Microsoft Outlook. 
• Enriched, deal-relevant data in one place: Affinity Sourcing automatically enriches company profiles with firmographic, funding, and growth data from trusted sources, and integrates network data and activity histories directly from the Affinity CRM. This gives investors a more complete view of each opportunity—without hours of manual research or switching between tools.

Cons

• Teams that haven’t leaned into relationship intelligence may initially find it challenging to unlock the full potential of Affinity’s relationship insights.

Best for

Affinity is the best deal sourcing software for private capital and venture capital firms looking for a relationship and data-driven solution.

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SourceScrub

Founded in 2014, SourceScrub is a legacy player in the deal sourcing software market. SourceScrub was originally built with the goal of addressing a gap in bootstrapped and founder-funded data for investors but supports a wide range of investment deal teams.

Key features

• Conference tracking and planning for in-person deal sourcing. 
• Expert-in-the-loop machine learning recommends high-potential opportunities.
• Multi-source verified deal data for better deal sourcing.

Pros

• Custom scoring model allows for custom algorithms for company scoring and ranking.
• Browser extension brings Sourcescrub data where you work.

Cons

• Built for broader deal teams, from consultants to corporate development, with fewer private capital-specific features. 
• UI is less intuitive compared to competitors and often reports performance issues. 
• No native CRM functionality, requiring additional software.

Best for

SourceScrub is best for early-stage and growth-stage investment firms, as well as private equity and M&A. 

Grata

Acquired in 2025 by virtual data room platform Datasite, Grata is an AI-driven deal sourcing platform for private market dealmakers, specializing in mid-market companies.

Key features

• AI-powered Deep Search combines public and proprietary data for unified deal insights.
• Dynamic search engine continuously indexes websites to discover new companies.
• Live Deal Network provides real-time access to active deals.

Pros

• Similar search functionality helps identify deals that match ones in your pipeline.
• Web search functionality means sourcing insights go existing firm and proprietary data.

Cons

• Lack of native CRM functionality means you require an additional CRM software.
• CRM synchronization is one-way.
• Limited relationship insights to identify warm outreach opportunities.
• Data points are limited to 25 per company.

Best for

Grata is best for middle-market deal teams that prioritize industry insights and ML research in their deal sourcing. 

Harmonic

Harmonic describes itself as a startup database, designed to help venture capital firms discover early-stage companies and opportunities. 

Key features

• A growing database of startups and founders.
• Scout AI Agent centralizes data across the web, networks, and CRM to uncover opportunities.
• Real-time alerts help stay on top of the latest updates for target companies.
• Syncs connections and communications across your team.

Pros

• Purpose-built for venture capitalists.
• Robust APIs to connect with your existing tech stack.

Cons

• Only supports early-stage VC deal teams, no growth-stage data.
• Extensive developer support is required for several APIs and integrations.
• Limited reviews to validate customer experiences.

Best for

Harmonic is best for venture capital firms sourcing early-stage startups. 

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Synaptic 

Synaptic is a data-powered deal sourcing software providing public and private market dealmakers with the data they need to make more confident investment decisions. 

Key features

• Alternative data creates a 360-degree view of companies.
• Over 5B data points for data-driven deal decisions.
• Proprietary growth index helps score leads.

Pros

• Modular build makes it possible to integrate third-party datasets into your data warehouse.
• Mobile app makes it possible to take data on the go. 

Cons

• Limited data coverage for smaller companies.
• Large number of data sources can be tedious to extract relevant insights.
• Users report challenges with customer support.

Best for

Synaptic is best for companies across a wide range of investment segments that need robust data signals to support deal sourcing efforts.  

Specter

Specter is a deal sourcing software that uses live data and AI analysis to help private market investors make stronger deal decisions. 

Key features

• Talent and HR signal tracking for additional company insights.
• Datasets for companies, people, investors, and transactions. 
• Network tracking for better visibility and relationship mapping.

Pros

• Integrations with a large number of apps in common dealmaking tech stacks.
• Syncs with leading private capital CRM, including Affinity.

Cons

• Limited-to-no customer reviews to validate data accuracy and software experience.
• No relationship data to support relationship-driven deal sourcing.
• Limited support outside of private

Best for

Synaptic is best for teams focusing on sourcing early and growth-stage opportunities. 

Make your deal sourcing software a differentiator

Deal sourcing is the foundation of your firm’s success. Your software should be more than a database, it needs to help you find and engage quality opportunities at the right time.

Affinity Sourcing is trusted by the world’s leading private capital firms to find the right deals faster. With robust relationship intelligence to turn your network into opportunities and data enrichment to enable faster data-driven deal decisions, Affinity powers your deal sourcing process so you can find more deals, faster.

Ready to turn your deal sourcing into a competitive advantage? Schedule a demo now to see how Affinity can power your deal pipeline.

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Deal sourcing platform FAQs

What is a deal sourcing platform?

A deal sourcing platform is a software that helps deal teams uncover opportunities and deals that match their investment criteria. They often include features and insights to help dealmakers find, engage, and prioritize deal opportunities, such as relationship intelligence, data enrichment and growth signals, custom deal algorithms, and targeted watch lists.

One of the best platforms for private capital and VC deal sourcing is Affinity. Affinity combines the strength of your firm’s network and proprietary and third-party data to surface opportunities that match your thesis—while improving outreach. 

What are the best deal sourcing channels for dealmakers?

The best deal sourcing channels for dealmakers can include:

• Your firm’s network and existing relationships.
• Conferences and industry events.
• Startup accelerators and incubators.
• Inbound deal flow through marketing and brand recognition.
• Portco referrals.

Every firm has different sourcing channels that drive success depending on their investment process and thesis. The best dealmakers can dive into their deal sourcing strategies to identify channels with the greatest potential for success.

What is deal origination?

Often used interchangeably with deal sourcing, deal origination is the process of identifying and activating new opportunities. Once a firm identifies an investment opportunity, deal origination the first step for driving it into your pipeline. 

What are the benefits of deal sourcing software for investment banking?

Similar to private capital, investment banking teams can improve productivity and maximize resources when they choose a deal sourcing or M&A software platform that includes robust, modern CRM features. 

• Automated data capture can help investment banking and M&A dealmakers free up time to focus on more impactful activities.
• Relationship intelligence can help dealmakers identify warm connections to founders, PE firms, and advisors who are close to upcoming transactions. 
• Network insights and mapping enable investment teams to surface high-potential opportunities early by building strong relationships and positioning themselves as trusted advisors before a process formally begins.
• Increased access to company insights can help investors stay ahead of the competition, accessing M&A deals and opportunities first.