Your corporate development function. On retainer. Working now.
Fractional Corporate Development (FCD) is a retained service that gives an owner-led company the acquisition function large companies staff in-house. A corporate development department decides what to buy and why, finds the targets, structures the deals, arranges the capital, runs the diligence, and integrates what it buys. Companies doing hundreds of millions in revenue employ a team for this because buying companies is a job, and it does not get done on the side.
FCD rents that function instead of building it. A senior team works inside your company, under your brand, on retainer, so acquisition becomes a standing capability rather than a one-time project. The logic is the same one that created the fractional CFO a generation ago: senior judgment, without the full-time hire.
You may also hear it called fractional business development. The phrase usually means outsourced sales: someone hired part-time to generate customer leads. Fractional Corporate Development is the acquisition version. It grows the company by buying other companies, not by selling more to customers.
Owners looking for this often describe it as a job title instead: a fractional head of acquisitions, or a fractional acquisition lead. Someone who owns the acquisition funnel rather than advising from the sidelines. That is the role, and FCD fills it with a team rather than one person.
The short version: you make the capital-allocation decisions. We run everything that gets a deal to your desk.
How each piece works: writing the acquisition thesis, sourcing off-market and pre-market deals, testing the earnings, building the capital stack, handling what could go wrong, and the first 100 days after closing.
A fractional head of acquisitions, sometimes called a fractional acquisition lead, is a senior acquisition executive who runs a company's acquisition program part-time, on retainer. They own the funnel: the broker and owner conversations, the target pipeline, valuation, structure and financing, LOIs, and first-stage diligence, and they bring the owner only the decisions that matter. Fractional Corporate Development is the same role delivered by a team.
Takes over the deals and broker conversations already in progress, builds and runs an off-market and pre-market pipeline, talks directly with brokers and owners, reviews financials and normalizes earnings, values the business, models structure and financing, identifies risks and integration issues, coordinates the letter of intent and first-stage diligence, and screens out everything that does not deserve the owner's time.
The function runs three desks, and one team carries the deal across all of them.
The investment thesis: what we buy, why, and what we plan to do with it. The target universe mapped and reached under your brand, across on-market, pre-market, and off-market channels. Industry relationships built until you are a magnet for leads. And the full relationship toolbox: subcontract, joint venture, merger, or acquisition, whichever structure the opportunity calls for.
More than introductions: the deal structured so both sides can say yes. Price, terms, seller financing, earnouts, the tax wrapper. A find is not a list of owners who answered the phone. A find is a deal that can get done.
The capital stack arranged and closed in-house: senior debt, SBA, private credit, bridge, seller financing, and equity. Lender relationships, consents, and workouts managed for you. All of it inside the retainer. No placement fees, and no referral to an outside network.
Diligence run on the risks that actually kill deals, with contingencies in place. Continuous negotiation that keeps good deals alive through the surprises. The close driven, and integration planned from the thesis before day one. A deal is finished when the two companies are one.
One cycle, governed by one thesis. The thesis runs through every step. The moment a deal no longer fits it, we kill it, before it wastes any more time or money. Killing a bad deal early is part of finishing the job.
A broker finds you an introduction, almost always paid by the seller. A lender funds what you bring them. An attorney papers what you hand over. Each does their piece and leaves, and every handoff drops knowledge the next step needed. Nobody sells finished.
One function carries the deal, and what it learns, across every seam. What sourcing learns shapes the structure. What structure sets up, diligence verifies. What diligence finds becomes the integration plan. And each finished deal makes the next one easier.
| Hire corp dev | Rent it: BluGrowth | Investment bank | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Who does the work | One hire, working alone. Quality depends on who you can recruit. | A senior team, the same people from thesis to integration. | Senior banker pitches; junior analysts execute. |
| Time to market | Six to twelve months to recruit and ramp. | Active sourcing inside 30 days. | Scoped to one transaction; starts and ends with it. |
| Between deals | On payroll whether the pipeline is live or not. | The pipeline keeps running; the next deal is in motion while this one closes. | Nothing. You start over, with new fees. |
| Cost and exit | $150K+ a year, plus severance if it fails. | Monthly retainer plus a success fee at close. No severance, no sunk fees when it ends. | Engagement fees per deal; minimums often exceed the percentage at this size. |
A monthly retainer for the function, plus a success fee only when a deal closes, on a modified scale that steps down as transaction value grows. All capital arrangement is included: no placement fees, no capital advisory fees, no engagement deposits, no per-deal minimums. A weekly check-in is most of what the engagement asks of your time.
Buying just one company? A Buy-Side Engagement is the same team and the same work, scoped to one deal and priced in fixed stages.
You pay for a finished deal, not a started one.
Want to see what the math does over five years? Run your numbers.
Owner-led companies growing through acquisition as a program rather than a one-time event. What changes as the pace picks up is covered in going from one acquisition to one a year. Most of our work sits between $2M and $20M of enterprise value, with the core at $3M to $10M, where a single loan stops covering the deal and the capital stack has to be built.
Our lead practice is trades and specialty contractors, residential, commercial, and industrial, buying in or next to their own trade. We also work with manufacturing and wholesale distributionowners.
A retained service that gives an owner-led company the acquisition function large acquirers staff in-house: one senior team that finds the deal, funds it, and finishes it, working under your brand on a monthly retainer.
It is how the function runs. Find: a deal sourced and structured so it can actually get done, not just an introduction. Fund: the capital stack arranged and closed in-house. Finished: diligence, the close, and integration, carried by the same team that started the deal.
A broker finds you a deal and is almost always paid by the seller. BluGrowth runs your whole acquisition program on your side of the table: sourcing, structure, capital, diligence, and integration, paid by you and never the other side, including telling you when a deal should not be finished.
For an acquisition program, a monthly retainer plus a success fee at close on a modified scale. No placement fees, no capital advisory fees, no deposits, no per-deal minimums.
Yes. That is a Buy-Side Engagement: the same team and the same work, found, funded, and finished, scoped to one deal and priced in fixed stages.
Owner-led buyers acquiring companies of roughly $2M to $20M enterprise value, with core work at $3M to $10M. Our lead practice is trades and specialty contractors, residential, commercial, and industrial, buying in or next to their own trade. We also work with manufacturing and wholesale distribution owners.
No. Some engagements begin with getting the platform ready: the balance sheet positioned to fund a deal and the operation able to absorb one. Getting you to the starting line is part of the same function.
The opposite. Every deal is governed by the investment thesis, and the moment a deal no longer fits it, we kill it, before it wastes more time or money. The success fee only pays on deals worth finishing, so we have no reason to force a bad one.
