Frequently Asked Questions

DealPilot AI values your business the way real buyers do: it looks at your sales and your yearly take-home profit (called SDE — seller's discretionary earnings) and compares them to what similar businesses actually sold for. It won't replace the final negotiated price, but it gives you an honest starting number before you spend money on outside help.

DealPilot is built as a standalone DIY seller workspace. If you later hire outside help, your valuation notes, readiness work, CIM-style materials (drafts of a CIM — the confidential summary document serious buyers expect), diligence files, and buyer pipeline history remain useful because they are organized around your business, not around a broker process.

Nothing goes public until you decide it does. Your valuation and CIM are generated privately inside your account. When you're ready to talk to buyers you choose, DealPilot AI requires NDAs before any identifying information is shared - a standard confidentiality workflow built directly into the platform.

BizBuySell reaches 3.5M visitors - but most are tire-kickers with no capital and no intent. You'll spend months fielding unqualified inquiries while your business sits on a static listing with no valuation and no CIM. DealPilot AI gives you a real valuation, a professional CIM, and a listing built to filter for serious buyers - plus the tools to run your own buyer outreach instead of just waiting on a static post. Our buyer marketplace is new and growing, so today most sellers pair their DealPilot listing with their own outreach; as more buyers join, matching gets stronger too. One qualified buyer closes a deal. One thousand unvetted hits don't.

Success fees can be expensive because they are tied to the sale price. DealPilot keeps the software path flat and visible: $0 for the initial estimate, then transparent flat fees for the detailed valuation report and seller launch kit, and a monthly deal room when you are actively managing buyers. See the pricing page for current pricing — launch pricing is available for early sellers.

You can have a complete listing — including AI-generated valuation and a professional CIM — ready in under 30 minutes. Simply enter your financials, answer a few questions about your business, and our AI handles the rest. You control when and whether the listing goes live.

Rough annual sales and profit is enough to start — your bookkeeper or last tax return has the exact numbers. For the full buyer packet (called a CIM), we'll also ask how the business runs day to day, who your customers are, who works for you, how the business has grown, and why you're selling. Start with rough numbers and refine them later.

After creating a buyer profile, you'll specify your target industry, deal size, geography, and deal structure (buying the whole business, a majority share, or just the assets). Businesses appear on DealPilot AI only when their owners choose to publish a listing. When a published listing matches your criteria, we show it to you and alert you when new ones fit your profile — so you're not browsing pages of irrelevant listings.

Before you can see anything that identifies a business, you sign an NDA (a non-disclosure agreement — a written promise to keep what you learn private). When a listing interests you, you request the NDA right on the platform. The owner reviews and approves it, and once it's signed you can see the full sales packet and detailed financials. The whole thing is digital and usually done within a day.

DealPilot AI displays seller-submitted financials as provided, clearly labeled as unaudited. For larger transactions, we recommend conducting your own financial due diligence. Our platform makes it easy to request additional documents through the secure deal room once an NDA is in place.

Owners who publish a listing say what kind of sale they're open to: selling the whole business, selling a majority share, or selling just the assets. Each listing shows the asking price and whether the owner is open to paying part of the price later based on results (called an earnout), lending the buyer part of the price themselves (seller financing), or a government-backed small business loan (an SBA loan). You can filter by deal type to narrow your search.

Yes — once an NDA is signed and approved, you can communicate directly with the seller through our secure messaging system. All communications are logged in your deal room, keeping everything organized and confidential throughout the process.

Creating a buyer account and browsing published listings is free. A buyer account lets you request NDAs, access deal rooms, and message owners directly. Check our pricing page for current details on seller setup and subscription pricing.