Start your free preview and set your mandate

Use this when

you were just approved on the buy side and want to see which deals fit your mandate.

Your free preview lets you browse live deals, review financials, and publish a mandate to see what fits. You don't need a credit card.

This guide walks you through starting your preview, setting your mandate, and what happens when the preview ends.

Step 1: Finish your account from the approval email

Open your approval email and follow the link to set your password. Your 7-day preview starts when you open the dashboard.

Can't find the email? Check your spam folder for a message from PrivSource. If it's still missing, email support@privsource.com .

Step 2: Publish a mandate and start seeing matching deals

Open My Mandates and tell us what you're looking to buy. Include industry, location, size, and any other criteria that matter to you. You'll get a ranked list of matching deals, each with why it fits and the gap, if there is one.

Your mandate keeps working after the preview ends. For help setting it up, see Publish a mandate.

Tip: Give your mandate a careful first pass. Your criteria determine the quality of your matches. Advisors also see your mandate and can hand-pick you for their deals.

Note: You need a membership to open teasers, view NDAs, and get seller contact details. Find a deal you want to pursue? Subscribe from the deal page, then contact the seller.

Matched deals with a Strong fit label marked

Step 3: When your free preview ends

After the preview, the dashboard locks deal details. Your mandate still matches incoming deals, and we'll keep emailing you those matches at no cost. Keep an eye on your market and subscribe when you want to unlock a deal and contact the seller.

Membership costs $149 for the first month, then $299 per month. No success fee, ever. See Pricing and billing.

Frequently asked questions

Will I be charged when the preview ends?

No. We don't collect a card for the preview. You pay only when you choose a membership.

When does my preview start?

When you set your password and open the dashboard, not when the approval email arrives.

Can I open teasers during the preview?

No. The preview lets you browse deal summaries and financials. Teasers, NDAs, and seller contact details require a membership.

Will I still receive matches after the preview ends?

Yes. Your mandate keeps matching, and match emails keep arriving at no cost. Subscribe when you want to unlock a deal and contact the seller.

Do this with Claude

Connect PrivSource to Claude once and run this workflow from a conversation. Same account, same access. Set up the connection

Starter prompt

Full workflow guide →
Copy into Claude

Using PrivSource, help me publish a buyside mandate. We're looking to acquire [type of company] in [geography] with [size range, e.g. $1M-$5M EBITDA]. Draft the mandate, show me what's missing before it can be published, and fill in the remaining fields with me. Publish only after I confirm, then check whether it already has matched deals.

Then try

  • “Publish a buyside mandate for HVAC platforms in Texas with $1M+ EBITDA”
  • “Show me this week's matches and save the strong ones to my pipeline”
  • “What do my mandate learnings say I should change?”

Agent instructions

The skill file PrivSource publishes for this workflow. Give it to any agent that supports skills, or read it to see exactly what the tools do.

Raw SKILL.md
Show the full instructions

PrivSource Buyside Mandates

Buyside mandate tools are buyer-side. They manage the authorized buyer account's own acquisition mandates — the criteria sellers browse when looking for buyers — and the deal matches PrivSource finds for published mandates. Drafts are private; publishing makes a mandate visible to seller accounts.

Workflow

  1. Call privsource_whoami if unsure whether the account has buyside-mandates access.
  2. Call list_buyside_mandates to find existing mandates before creating a new one. Filter with status (draft, published, archived).
  3. Call create_buyside_mandate with a title to start a draft. Add criteria in the same call or later with update_buyside_mandate.
  4. Call get_buyside_mandate and check publishable and missing_fields before publishing.
  5. Call publish_buyside_mandate only when the user asks to publish and missing_fields is empty. Publishing makes the mandate visible to sellers, so confirm intent first.

Reviewing Deal Matches

PrivSource matches live deals against published mandates. Each mandate from list_buyside_mandates includes match_count, strong_match_count, and to_review_count — use them to pick which mandate has matches worth reviewing.

  1. Call get_buyside_mandate_matches with the mandate id. Matches come back ordered by fit with a score, a fit_band (strong or possible), an explanation, and a review_state. Filter with review_state (to_review, in_pipeline, not_a_fit); meta.review_state_counts shows the split.
  2. If meta.matches_first_time_finding is true, PrivSource is still building the mandate's first matches — say matching is in progress rather than reporting that nothing matched.
  3. Each match includes a deal summary. available: false means an engaged stale match remains visible for history but the deal is no longer on the market. direct_listing: true means the seller shared it directly; shared_by identifies that seller, and Direct Listings lead their fit band.
  4. Pass an available match's deal.id to get_deal for full details; send_deal_outreach works on contactable deals.
  5. Call update_buyside_mandate_match to record the buyer's verdict: review_state: in_pipeline saves the deal to the buyer's pipeline (Interested on a direct listing), not_a_fit passes on the deal and hides it from the feed, and to_review undoes either. Set feedback_comment only for not_a_fit matches to explain why you passed.
  6. Saving to pipeline and hiding act for the whole buyer account, so confirm intent before changing review states in bulk.

Mandate Learnings

When the account has mandate learnings, get_buyside_mandate includes learnings and archived_learnings arrays from the buyer's match feedback. Each learning has these fields:

  • id: the identifier for update_buyside_mandate_learning.
  • dimension: the observable deal attribute (sector, geo, size, business_model, customer, or characteristic).
  • direction: the ranking effect (exclude, penalize, or boost).
  • rule: one declarative matching rule.
  • evidence_type: explicit for comments or implicit for behavior.
  • event_count: the number of supporting feedback events.
  • status: pending for a one-event signal or active after two or more supporting events.
  • observations and evidence_match_ids: the evidence summary and referenced matches.

learnings_analyzing is true while a refresh is running. Treat a pending learning as a weak signal.

Review active learnings before editing a mandate. Apply agreed changes with update_buyside_mandate.

Ignore a learning with update_buyside_mandate_learning and archived: true. Restore it with archived: false. These are the same actions as the dashboard.

Field Meaning

All criteria describe the companies the buyer wants to acquire.

  • min_revenue / max_revenue and min_ebitda / max_ebitda: target company financials in whole US dollars. Use the no_min_* / no_max_* booleans when the mandate explicitly has no bound.
  • industry_groups: the primary industry must come from the PrivSource mandate taxonomy (enumerated in the tool schema); each group takes optional sub_industries and a free-text niche. The array replaces the mandate's existing groups.
  • locations: PrivSource location names such as countries, U.S. regions, U.S. states, or Remote. The array replaces the mandate's existing locations.
  • industry_agnostic / no_geographic_preference: set these instead of industries/locations when the mandate has no preference.
  • description: the investment thesis; must be at least 100 characters before publishing.
  • close_timeline: required before publishing.

Publish Requirements

Publishing requires a descriptive title, a 100+ character description, industry preferences (groups, agnostic, or exclusions), at least one revenue or EBITDA value, geography (locations or no preference), and a close timeline. Resolve missing_fields from get_buyside_mandate first.

Error Handling

  • Archive and unarchive with update_buyside_mandate's archived flag. Archived mandates must be unarchived before publishing.
  • If a tool reports validation errors, fix the named fields and retry rather than guessing new values.

Feedback notes are only available for not_a_fit matches. Set the state and pass reason together, or edit an existing pass reason.

Exports

Call get_buyside_mandate_matches_export with the mandate id.
The response returns the file directly in export.content. No browser sign-in is needed.
If encoding is base64, decode content to bytes. If it is utf-8, use the text directly.
Save the result using filename and content_type, or analyze the CSV text in the agent.
Check ready first. Unavailable exports return unavailable_reason without file content.
The CSV includes all dashboard review states and fixed columns. Paid buyer and Deal Network access are required.
dashboard_url is optional context. It is not required to get the file.

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