Every month, Succession Scout hands you 150–250 verified, off-market businesses with aging owners — matched to your niche and geography, screened against PE ownership and recent transitions, with the succession evidence quoted and sourced. You do the part only you can do: call the owner.
Real rows from a recent sample — commercial HVAC & mechanical contractors, Texas. Every claim verified against the company's own website or BBB registration and sourced. No directory-scraped junk.
| Tier | Company profile | Yrs | Aging-owner evidence |
|---|---|---|---|
| A | Refrigeration & HVAC — Tyler, TX | 43 | Founder in the trade since the 1970s; still gives customers his personal cell — owner-dependent operation |
| A | Mechanical contractor — Waco, TX | 70 | Current owner acquired in 1989 — 37 years of ownership; "same phone number since 1956" |
| A | HVAC / plumbing / refrigeration — Lubbock, TX | 54 | Founder deceased; family maintains estate ownership — 100+ staff, 65-vehicle fleet |
From the current sample: 31 verified companies, 16 Tier A — plus 22 screened out for PE ownership, recent transitions, or unverifiable claims. Company names shown in the full sample.
Niche, geography, size range, and what a great target looks like to you. Fifteen minutes by email or a short call — then we get out of your way.
150–250 prospects per month with tenure and succession signals: founding era, owner tenure, generational language, size and recurring-revenue markers. PE-owned and recently-transitioned companies are removed — and we show you what we removed.
Delivered as a scored spreadsheet/CSV ready for your CRM, deduplicated against every prior month, with owner contact info where publicly available.
No. Succession Scout is a research service. We identify and verify prospects; we take no success fees, represent no sellers, and play no role in your negotiations. That keeps our incentives exactly aligned with yours: volume and accuracy.
Public primary sources: the companies' own websites, state registrations, BBB records, and other published materials. Owner-age signals are documented inferences (tenure, founding era, generational language) — every row shows its evidence and source so you can judge it yourself.
Any niche with established, private, owner-operated companies — commercial services, distribution, light manufacturing, healthcare services, B2B services. If your thesis is unusual, send it over; we'll tell you honestly whether the signals exist for it.
Over half of US employer businesses are owned by someone 55+, and most have no succession plan. Owner retirement is the single most reliable reason a great business quietly comes up for sale — before a broker, and before an auction.