Fair questions. Straight answers.

No — and it doesn't pretend to be. The pre-screen is the step before them. It tells you whether a deal is even worth their time (and their fees). If the report says "proceed with conditions," you walk into your CPA's office with the red flags mapped and the right questions ready. If it says "hard stop," you just saved yourself the retainer. Think of it the way a geode buyer does: first you cut the stone open, then you hire the appraiser. Nobody books the appraisal until they know there's something inside worth appraising.

The pre-screen catches what is visible in the documents you provide. It cross-checks every document against every other and applies the same fixed framework every time — that's how it catches things a tired human skims past. But it cannot see what isn't in the paperwork, and it doesn't verify documents against the outside world. That's why it's a first filter: real due diligence by a CPA or attorney still matters on any deal you decide to pursue. The evidence-gaps section in every report tells you honestly how much weight the analysis can carry given what you uploaded.

You could, and the instinct is right — buyers are doing exactly that. The difference is what runs underneath. A general chatbot improvises: ask twice and you get two different answers, and it never tells you what it skipped. The pre-screen applies the same fixed framework to every deal, cross-checks every document against every other, and returns a structured result: risk level, red flags ranked by damage, missing documents, seller questions, and an evidence-gaps section that says plainly what the analysis cannot prove. One is a conversation. The other is a checklist built from thirty years of reading deals.

Yes. Your documents are used only to produce your report. They are not shared with sellers, brokers, or any third party, and we delete them automatically after three months.

The minimum useful set: the listing or CIM (Confidential Information Memorandum — the seller's information packet), profit & loss statements (ideally 3 years), business tax returns, a balance sheet, and the asking price and terms. The more you add, the stronger the report: bank statements, AR/AP aging reports (unpaid invoices and bills, by age), customer revenue breakdown, the lease, a debt schedule. Full list on the How it works page →

One report, in sections: the executive summary and the call, the confirmed conclusions (each claim labelled asserted, documented, reconciled or contradicted), the evidence gaps, the missing documents, and the source documents every conclusion traces back to. Plus the red-flag list and the exact questions to ask the seller. There's an illustrative sample on the How it works page →

Run the pre-screen anyway. The evidence-gaps section will mark the analysis as lower-confidence, and the report will put "request the tax returns" at the top of your seller questions. One useful signal: how a seller responds to that request tells you a lot by itself.

Yes. Upload the FDD (Franchise Disclosure Document) along with the financials. Item 19, the section where the franchisor reports financial performance, gets checked against the actual numbers the seller gave you, and the report flags where they diverge.

The analysis is instant: from the moment your documents are uploaded, the AI reads and cross-checks them and generates your report, usually within a couple of minutes. One step comes first — after you request a pre-screen, we email you a secure upload link. No meetings, no scheduling, no waiting on a specialist's calendar.

A full pre-screen is $597 per deal, and the deal stays open for 90 days. Comparing several businesses? Three pre-screens bought together are $1,197 — three deals for what two cost separately, used one at a time. Right now, the first 50 pre-screens are free — genuinely free, no card required. It's our founding round: we want real deals running through the system while we gather feedback, before we charge full price. After the 50th deal (or the deadline), the price goes to $597 — and everyone in the founding 50 can buy their second deal at $397. Details on the Pricing page →

If your pre-screen doesn't give you anything worth acting on (not one flag, gap, or question you didn't already have), tell us within 7 days and we'll make it right. We don't promise outcomes on your deal; we promise a report that earns its price.

US small-business purchases up to about $1M — the deals where full professional due diligence ($30K–$80K+) doesn't pencil out, but the buyer's life savings are on the line. Main Street businesses, service companies, e-commerce, franchises.

Yes, and it is the same product at the same price — you upload your own documents instead of a seller's. The report then reads them the way a buyer's side is going to read them: it labels which of your figures are documented and which are only asserted, shows what businesses of your size sold for using median multiples from a published quarterly survey of closed deals, and shows the gap between the earnings you would quote and the earnings your documents actually support. That gap is usually where a price gets renegotiated, and finding it now beats finding it six weeks into diligence.

What it is not is a valuation. It is not an appraisal or an opinion of what your business is worth, and it never tells you what to ask for it. A median is the middle of a wide range — half of comparable deals closed above it and half below. For an actual valuation you want a licensed appraiser.

On your own deals, yes — that is what professionals do today, at the same $597 per pre-screen everyone pays. Sell-side, you run it on a listing before a buyer's advisor does, so you meet their questions already knowing the answers. Buy-side, it applies the same framework to every deal a client brings you, so three businesses are compared on equal terms rather than on how closely you read each one.

A professional tier called Advisor, with a shared workspace and a lower per-deal rate, is being built and is not on sale; the price on the pricing page is provisional until it launches. The waitlist is open, and joining it is how you tell us what it should include.

Alex Mez — 30+ years in the financial markets, and he still runs his own FINRA Registered Broker-Dealer / Licensed Securities Firm. He built DealLoupe to be the straight second opinion first-time buyers never get, running the professionals' own methodology on your documents. On scope: your report is generated by the AI applying that methodology to your documents, and DealLoupe is a first filter, not a replacement for your CPA or attorney. Read his story and the methodology →

The report ends with a clear call. If it's "proceed with conditions," it also tells you which specialist the deal deserves next (CPA, M&A attorney, SBA lender, or a Quality of Earnings review) and hands you the question list to bring them. If it's "pause for evidence" or "reprice or restructure," you know your next conversation with the seller. If it's "hard stop," you keep your savings for a stone that's actually worth cutting open.