Methodology
The methodology behind the pre-screen.
An AI is only as good as the checklist it runs on. Ours wasn't improvised. It was distilled from the sources the professionals actually use.
Where it comes from
The professionals' checklists. Applied the same way, every time.
The pre-screen runs on a red-flag framework built from the books, checklists, and playbooks that professional buyers, CPAs, M&A attorneys, and SBA lenders rely on when they evaluate a small business. We read what they read, pulled out what matters on Main Street deals — up to about $1M — and ordered it by one criterion: what actually kills deals.
The result is a fixed framework. The first ten points are public — that's our free guide, "The 10 Red Flags When Buying a Business." More flags arrive in the email series that follows it. The pre-screen checks your deal against the full framework, every time.
The stone pictured here is what every buyer starts with: the whole geode. Gray, sealed, a few gold veins to keep you interested. That's the seller's packet. The framework is the saw — twenty points drawn across every document until the inside is visible.
The framework
Four categories of red flags.
A few examples from each — the full framework runs twenty points deep.
Money
- Profit on paper that never turns into cash
- Add-backs that quietly inflate the price
- Listing numbers that don't match the tax returns
- No working capital left at closing
People & Operations
- The business runs on the owner, and the owner is leaving
- One or two customers are most of the revenue
- Dependence on a single supplier or key employee
Legal & Paperwork
- A lease that won't transfer to a new owner
- Skeletons in the closet: liens, lawsuits, back taxes
- Documents that are missing or contradict each other
Market & Reputation
- Sliding sales dressed up as "retiring at the top"
- Dependence on a single platform for customers or sales
- A story in the listing the market data doesn't support
Why an AI pre-screen
It catches what a first-time buyer misses.
Not because it's smarter than you. Because of three unfair advantages:
It never gets tired
By document nine, a human is skimming. The AI reads page 400 with the same attention as page 1, and applies the same framework to every deal, every time.
It cross-checks everything
Every document is compared against every other. The revenue line in the listing, the P&L, and the tax return either agree, or the report says exactly where they don't.
It has no commission
Brokers get paid when deals close. The AI doesn't. Nothing in the pre-screen has a financial interest in you saying yes.
Who built this
Alex Mez. 30 years in the markets — still calling deals like he sees them.
Alex has spent more than three decades in the financial markets, and he still runs his own FINRA Registered Broker-Dealer / Licensed Securities Firm today. Most of that career came down to two skills: reading a deal, and reading the person on the other side of the table. You get good at both, or you don't last thirty years.
He came to the US with no network and built a business from the ground up, so he doesn't romanticize deals, and he doesn't trust a number just because someone put it on a slide. He's watched too many good people lose real money on businesses they bought with their hearts instead of their eyes: a café sold on fiction, a store bought without anyone verifying the actual foot traffic. Every one had warning signs you could see in advance — if someone honest pointed them out.
That's the work he cares about now: being the straight second opinion people don't get anywhere else. Not a broker trying to close you, not a salesman, just someone who asks the uncomfortable questions before you sign. DealLoupe puts thirty years of that pattern recognition into a framework the AI runs on your documents, at a price and speed any first-time buyer can afford.
Straight about the scope. DealLoupe is a first filter, not a replacement for your CPA or attorney; it's built to tell you whether a deal is even worth their time. It doesn't certify or guarantee anything. It surfaces what an experienced eye would flag in the documents, so you walk in clear-eyed instead of hopeful.
Put the framework to work on your deal.
Twenty points, every document, cross-checked. In minutes you'll know what's really inside.