Results/Agency Futures
Agency Futures: first sell-side mandate inside 60 days
The client
The mandate
Agency Futures is a boutique M&A practice working sell-side mandates, recapitalisations and strategic partnerships for owner-operated agencies. Their problem was the one every sell-side advisor has: mandates come from relationships, and relationships do not arrive on a schedule.
The engagement ran from September 2025 to the end of February 2026.
The result
What it produced
The first signed sell-side mandate came inside 60 days. At steady state the engine held around eight off-market founder conversations a week, sustained for more than four months, across five agency segments running in parallel, each with its own positioning rather than one message sprayed across the category.
For a sell-side advisory a single signed mandate carries a retainer plus six-figure success-fee potential, so the arithmetic on a standing origination function is settled by a small number of conversations rather than by volume. One closed deal paid for the engagement.
In hindsight
What we would do differently
The segmentation was right and the conversation volume held. What drifted was the definition of a good-fit agency, as the strongest segments were worked through and the list widened to keep the weekly number up.
On a mandate this narrow the target definition needs revisiting every few weeks rather than at the end of a quarter. That is now how we run this shape of engagement, and it is the single change that came out of this one.
Figures are taken from our own systems and stated as measured. Where a number is a blended average across campaigns or variants, the page says so.
FAQ
Questions about this engagement
What kind of firm is Agency Futures?
A boutique M&A advisory specialising in sell-side mandates, recapitalisations and strategic partnerships for owner-operated agencies.
How quickly did it produce a mandate?
The first signed sell-side mandate came within 60 days of the engagement starting.
Is the engagement still running?
No. It ran from September 2025 to the end of February 2026, and the figures on this page are from that period.
See what this would produce for your mandate
Thirty minutes on your thesis, the size of your universe and who takes the call. Our pricing and our measured benchmarks are both published, so you can check them before we speak.
Confidential, and handled by the team that would run your mandate. Or read more client results first.