Model · 5 min read

Small tickets, made viable

A whole segment of the market is invisible not because the assets lack value, but because the cost of transacting them is too high. Change the cost structure, and the segment reappears.

Why small deals go unserved

A traditional M&A advisor cannot profitably work a deal below a few million euros. The fixed cost of running a process — sourcing, qualification, documentation, negotiation — is roughly the same whether the ticket is €500k or €50M, so on small tickets the fee simply does not cover the work. The result is structural: viable businesses on the €10k–€10M band are left without an intermediary, and many are wound down rather than sold.

€10k–€10M
The band conventional advisory cannot service profitably.

Industrialising the repetitive weight

An agentic platform absorbs the repetitive parts of each file — sourcing, scoring, qualification and documentation — driving down cost and legal turnaround. When the marginal cost of processing a file falls, intermediation on small tickets becomes viable end to end. Files that were invisible to the market become workable, and the buy-side gains access to a segment no one else services profitably.

Volume, not size, drives the model

The economics flip from a small number of large deals to a larger number of qualified small ones. That is a different business, and it needs a different engine. Judgment on real value stays a human call — the machine accelerates, it does not decide — but the throughput it enables is what makes the segment addressable at all.

Key takeaways

  • Process cost, not asset quality, is why the €10k–€10M band goes unserved.
  • An agentic platform lowers the marginal cost of each file, making small tickets viable end to end.
  • The model runs on volume of qualified deals, not on ticket size.
  • Automation accelerates; the valuation judgment stays human.

Have an asset or a deal in mind?

Open a confidential conversation. We reply within two business days — and can run a low-commitment paid qualification before any full brokerage engagement.

Contact us

Continue reading

Regtech that clears the corridor → The great transmission of European SMEs →