The $500M+ M&A Workflow That's Still Running on Spreadsheets

I stumbled on this CB Insights interview with V2O's CEO about their focus on the quality of earnings (QoE) workflow. The market math caught my attention: 5,000 to 10,000 deals a year in the middle and lower market, with reports costing $30k to $100k each. That's a $500M to $1B opportunity, according to Simone Qu.

Solid thesis. But here's what the interview doesn't cover—and where I think the real action is.

The problem isn't just the report. It's everything before it.

Our data shows acquirers, especially in the lower middle market, are spending absurd amounts of time just figuring out if a deal is worth pursuing. One user reported screening 5-10 messy small business acquisition deals per month using QuickBooks exports. The manual re-bucketing of expenses to normalize financials? Too slow, too costly. Severity score: 4/5. Opportunity score: 57/100.

That's a problem before a QoE provider even gets involved. And it's a perfect wedge for a tool that automates initial triage—pull in QuickBooks data, normalize categories, flag red flags, and give an acquirer a go/no-go signal. Nobody needs a $50k QoE report to know a deal stinks after ten minutes of looking at the books. They need a $500/month tool that does that first pass.

The market size might be smaller than V2O thinks.

I don't want to nitpick the CEO's numbers—the $500M to $1B range is plausible, and the formula checks out if you assume every deal gets a full QoE report. But our data suggests that's a big assumption. Many lower middle market deals skip the full QoE or use cheaper workarounds. If only 30-50% of those 5,000-10,000 deals actually pay for a QoE, the market could be $150M to $500M. Still interesting, but a different story for a venture-scale company.

That's not a knock on V2O. It's a nuance worth considering if you're building in this space. The high end of the market—larger deals, private equity—is already well-served. The low end is underserved but price-sensitive. The middle is where a scrappy SaaS tool can win.

Fraud and verification are the sleeper hits.

V2O mentions "data-heavy financial workflows" but doesn't talk about fraud. Yet our database tracks multiple high-severity fraud problems in financial services, like vendor email compromise fraud and crypto scam recovery, with severity scores of 4-5/5. One specific problem—vendor fraud detection—has an opportunity score of 62/100. Higher than the deal screening problem.

It's the same playbook: messy transaction data, human review, high cost of mistakes. AI can flag anomalies faster and cheaper. And unlike QoE reports, which are episodic (a deal happens once), fraud detection is continuous. Every invoice, every payment, every vendor change. That's a subscription business, not a transaction business.

What I'd build instead.

If I were a vibe coder or indie hacker looking at this space, I wouldn't try to compete with V2O on QoE report generation. That's a hard, regulated, credibility-driven market. I'd go upstream.

Build the deal screening tool. Connect to QuickBooks or Xero. Normalize the chart of accounts. Flag unusual expenses. Generate a simple, visual report that tells an acquirer if the deal is worth a closer look. Charge $200-$500/month per active acquirer. The pain is real, the willingness to pay is proven, and the sales cycle is short.

Or go sideways into fraud detection for small businesses. Vendor email compromise is rampant. A tool that monitors payment patterns and flags changes in vendor banking details could save a company $50k overnight. That's a no-brainer sell.

The larger point.

The M&A services market is ripe for automation, but the juiciest opportunities aren't where the big consulting firms are looking. They're in the messy, manual, spreadsheet-driven workflows that happen before the official process starts. V2O is right that data-heavy financial workflows are valuable. They're just starting at the wrong end of the funnel.

Data backs this up. We track 64 problems in financial services alone, with 51 associated app ideas. The average severity of the top problems: 4.4/5. That's high. People are hurting, and they're willing to pay to make it stop.

So read the interview. Appreciate the market math. Then go build the tool that makes the $30k report unnecessary for 80% of deals.