How to find potential acquirers for your SaaS company

You open a blank spreadsheet. Column A says "Potential acquirers." It stays empty for a while, because you are trying to think of names, and the names you think of are the ones everyone thinks of: the big platform in your category, maybe a competitor or two.

There is a better first move. Look at who has already bought companies like yours. Deals leave a record, and for listed companies that record is free.

The SEC lets anyone search the full text of every electronic filing since 2001, exhibits included (SEC, EDGAR Full-Text Search FAQ). That means you can search for the words a company uses when it buys something.

Take one search, run on 30 September 2026. Filing type: 8-K, the report a listed company files when something significant happens. Dates: 1 January to 30 September 2026. The exact phrase "definitive agreement to acquire," plus the word SaaS. It returned seven filings.

Not every result was a SaaS deal. A search like this is a net, not a list. But three of the seven showed three very different kinds of buyer, and that is the part worth knowing.

You can run the same search yourself. Pick the 8-K form type, set a date range and put your phrase in quotes. The tool doesn't understand natural-language questions, and wildcards don't work inside an exact phrase (same FAQ), so short exact phrases work best.

On 2 February 2026, Tyler Technologies, which sells software to government agencies, announced a deal to buy For The Record, a company whose SaaS software records courtroom proceedings. The cash price was about $212.5 million (Tyler Technologies, SEC filing, 2 February 2026).

The reason was easy to read. For The Record's chief executive said the two companies would combine his product with "Tyler's complementary technologies in the courts and justice space." Same customers. A product that completes theirs.

That is usually the most natural buyer you will find, and the easiest to explain. They already sell to the people who buy from you.

Badger Meter describes itself as a water technology company, with smart measurement hardware at its core. In April 2026 it announced a definitive agreement to buy UDlive, a UK provider of "hardware-enabled software solutions for sewer line monitoring" (Badger Meter, SEC filing, 17 April 2026).

UDlive is not pure SaaS, and Badger Meter is not a software company. But its chief executive was clear about what it was after: growth in "higher-margin, recurring software revenue streams over time."

Some buyers don't look like software companies at all. They sell hardware, equipment or services to your customers, and they want what you have: software, and revenue that renews. Ask who sells to your customers but has no software of their own. Then add them to the list.

On 18 August 2026, Francisco Partners agreed to buy Weave, a listed software company for healthcare practices. Francisco Partners is an investment firm, and says it has invested in over 500 technology companies. The price was about $650 million in equity value: $7.40 a share in cash, a 34% premium to the share price before the announcement (Weave, SEC filing, 18 August 2026).

Weave is a listed company, much bigger than most readers' businesses. The point is who was buying: an investor, not a competitor.

There is an old belief that private equity pays less than other buyers. SaaS Capital, a lender to private B2B SaaS companies, looked at 63 valuation events, about half of them sales and half equity raises. It found no statistically significant difference in average multiples between private equity and other counterparties (SaaS Capital, "What's Your SaaS Company Worth?", 5 February 2026). That is a small sample, and it mixes sales with investments, so I wouldn't over-read it. But it is a good reason not to cross investors off your list on a hunch.

Ask two questions about each name.

Can they afford you? Public companies publish their financial statements, and earlier deals show the size of check they are used to writing. I covered how to read that in How M&A buyers are identified from public signals.

Why would they want you? Write it as one sentence. For Tyler it would be: "We sell to the same courts, and this completes our justice products." For Badger Meter: "We want recurring software revenue in a market we already serve." If you can't write the sentence for a name, the name goes. Ten names you can explain are worth more than a hundred you can't.

It also helps to know what buyers will look at in you. SaaS Capital names three things that drive SaaS valuation multiples: how much the market currently wants to own SaaS companies, your revenue growth rate, and the quality of your recurring revenue. The first isn't yours to control. The other two are. SaaS Capital also found that net revenue retention, the share of last year's revenue you kept and grew, correlates with valuation (same paper). Know your growth and retention numbers before you talk to anyone.

There are other routes, and they are not mutually exclusive.

A marketplace works the other way around. Acquire.com describes itself as "the largest marketplace to buy and sell profitable online businesses." Sellers publish a listing, and buyers browse and make offers. It also offers an advisory service for SaaS founders. Instead of choosing your buyers, you wait for them to find you.

An advisor, such as an investment bank or a boutique, runs a sale process on your behalf and brings the buyers.

FAIR is neither. It doesn't list your company or run a sale. It is research software.

Whichever route you take, the list helps. It is how you judge whether the offers you get come from the right buyers.

Keep it short, ten or twelve names, with the one-sentence reason next to each. Update it when something changes: a buyer announces a deal, builds a stake in a competitor, or starts hiring for corporate development.

I wouldn't contact anyone yet. For now, the list is for learning what these companies buy, and for being ready if one of them calls.

That is the work FAIR does for you. It builds and updates the list from public data, with the reason behind each name.