FAQ

Questions finance buyers actually ask

Direct answers, including the ones that occasionally cost us a deal. If yours is missing, email it — the interesting questions end up on this page.

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Usually less than buyers expect — and the overlap is the point of the gap analysis. Conventional databases index companies they discovered through filings, news, and web crawls tuned for profiles. We start from a classification of the entire active web, which includes the long tail those crawls never profile: small industrial companies, family operations, businesses whose homepages don't use the category's obvious keywords. In our specimen runs, a meaningful share of confirmed fits per vertical are companies a keyword-driven index would miss or misclassify.

A ranked CSV of the full screened universe (every signal, every evidence snippet, every source URL), a curated report in the specimen format — top fits, non-obvious fits, documented exclusions, honest insufficient-evidence cases — and the exclusion log. Delivery as CSV, Excel, CRM-ready import, or API, as you prefer.

The screening happens at engagement time — we crawl and analyze candidate websites when you commission the run, not from a stale snapshot. Monitoring tiers re-screen the universe quarterly and deliver monthly deltas.

The method analyzes what companies publish about themselves on their business websites. We do not process consumer personal data, purchase intent data, or private-individual profiles. Where a signal touches a person — a named principal — it is limited to their public professional role on the company's own site. Alpha Quantum is a German company; EU data handling throughout.

That is the core use case. “Independent water treatment service companies with chemical programs but no PE ownership”, “distributors with in-house service techs”, “integrators certified on a specific vendor stack” — if the criterion is visible on websites, it is screenable. Custom re-runs on arbitrary ICP definitions are included in every tier.

The domain classification is global. Screening runs are typically scoped per market; current specimen coverage is US-focused, and the pipeline handles English and German natively with other major languages available on request.

Mandate Fit (70%) measures thesis match. Outreach Suitability (20%) asks whether there is an independent owner and identifiable decision-maker to contact. Transition Context (10%) captures self-described generational ownership and bench depth — deliberately capped so context never outranks fit. Full detail on the method page.

Yes, and the list is public: no consumer-captive verticals (veterinary, dental, medical practices, elder care, childcare, hospice and similar), and no engagements whose explicit strategy is local consumer pricing power. See standards.

No, and we advise skepticism toward anyone who claims to. Websites do not contain that information. We extract succession-relevant context a company states about itself — founding generation, visible bench, independence language — and refuse the rest. The refusal list is also on the standards page.

Depends entirely on the thesis. A tight industrial subvertical in one country typically yields a few hundred to a few thousand genuine candidates after triage — from a starting pool that can be fifty times larger. You see both numbers, and the triage rejects come with reasons.

That is what the specimen report is for: companies from a real vertical with every classification justified by quoted evidence — including deliberately excluded false positives. Check it against your own tools; if it doesn't surface anything yours missed, don't buy.

Typically two to three weeks from written thesis to delivered universe, depending on scope. The specimen report itself ships same-day on request.

Deliverables are structured for direct import (standard CSV/Excel schemas; DealCloud-, Salesforce- and Affinity-friendly layouts on request). API delivery is available on monitoring tiers.

Alpha Quantum, a Munich-based data engineering company operating one of the largest independent website classification databases — 100M+ domains serving enterprise clients in telecom, adtech, and security. About us.

Proof project from €4,900, full universe with deep shortlist from €9,900, annual monitoring from €18,000 per thesis. Custom ICP re-runs included in every tier. Pricing.

See what the full universe looks like for your thesis

One email. We send the specimen report the same day — every company scored and ranked with full signal transcripts, plus the exclusions we documented and why.

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