Go brokerless.
Buy and run your first UK business without a broker, alongside a small cohort doing exactly the same thing.
- Find off-market owners with the Brokerless Company Search Engine
- Solve real problems on weekly calls with searchers a few steps ahead
- Keep the fee, the control and the owner relationship a broker would take
The hard part isn't the idea. It's doing it alone.
Plenty of profitable, owner-managed businesses have traded for decades without ever needing a website, so they never surface in a web search. Rely on Google to build your list and you'll overlook some of the best ones, which were never up for sale to begin with.
Even when you know where to look, assessing companies is slow. Looking them up on Companies House, judging each against your criteria, then finding websites for manual research can take weeks. Many searchers hire teams of interns to do it. Most companies get discarded, so the list grows slowly.
Often your friends and family don't understand the search, let alone know how to help. The owners across the table negotiate for themselves, and most UK searchers fall back on American advice written for different rules.
For that fee they take the search off your hands, along with the control and the relationship with the owner. Buy-side brokers are built for corporate buyers with deep pockets, not for a self-funded searcher on their first deal.
Find the companies that never show up online
It searches every one of the 5 million-plus companies on the UK register, from Companies House and official owner data. That is how it surfaces the old, profitable, owner-managed businesses the usual tools miss.
A sector, a place, a type of company, and get a real target list back in seconds.
Owner age and tenure point you at the businesses closest to changing hands.
Net assets, headcount and cash position, read straight from public filings.
Brokerless finds each company's website for you, so the slowest part of the job is done before you open the list.
By hand this is evenings of filtering, reading filings and searching for websites one company at a time. It is also the part a broker charges thousands to take off you. With Brokerless it runs in seconds and stays yours.
Click either screenshot to zoom in
A cohort to get moving, a community to stay in
Brokerless is a cohort of fewer than ten that gets you moving, then a community you stay in. The search engine gives you an edge no course or forum has, and all of it is built for the UK, not the American playbook.
Find the business
You build a real target list with the search engine, screened to your exact criteria, so you never pour weeks into a company that was never a fit.
Get to a deal
In the weekly sessions you learn from searchers a few steps ahead: what works, what doesn't, and how they are getting past the exact problems in front of you. That is how you build the understanding a first-time buyer cannot outsource, right through outreach, first meetings and terms. For the specialist parts you get warm introductions to UK financing and legal advisers.
You keep control, the owner relationship and a real grasp of your own deal. You pay a flat membership, never a broker's cut of what you buy.
Own it
A broker is gone the moment they're paid. Your Brokerless cohort stays. Complete a deal and you graduate into a group of Brokerless owners, on to the next set of challenges.
I fired my broker and built the tool that replaced him.
He charged thousands a month, qualified nothing, and talked over me and the sellers until owners started to ghost him. So I built the tool that finds the companies and puts me in front of owners directly. It has taken me into negotiations with companies I doubt he would ever have found, and it is the same one your cohort now runs.
Who runs this
I'm Mark Steele. I spent twenty years in technology, starting technical before moving into project management, then IT operations, running teams of dozens of people and tens of millions in revenue a year. I left that comfortable existence to buy and run a business of my own. What I did not expect was how lonely the search can be. Connecting and working alongside other searchers showed me the things I didn't know I didn't know, and stopped me chasing bad deals. Brokerless is two things: the search engine I built to find companies, and a community I'm forming so others don't have to do it alone. I run the weekly calls, but the people you will lean on most are the other searchers going brokerless alongside you.
PS: I'm still on my own search. If you're looking to sell a profitable London-based IT services business, I'd love to talk.
Ready to go brokerless?
The broker leaves at completion. Your cohort does not. Find your own targets, get owners talking, close the deal on your terms, and keep the people around you long after.
Apply for the next cohortHand-picked cohorts of fewer than ten, free for founding members for a limited time. Active and serious searchers only.