Raincatcher
At a Glance
A credible national option to interview alongside a local CBI; make them state the fee and the minimum in the first call.
- Pricing
- Success Fee, Success-fee model; rates and minimums are not published and require a consultation. Third-party figures circulate without a primary source behind them.
- Best For
- Owners preparing a sale in the $3M-plus revenue range who want a national process; buyers who want revenue and earnings before registering anywhere
- Kind
- One firm, one bench of brokers, one process.
- Footprint
- Works nationwide.
- Sells
- Lower middle market owners at $3M to $100M of revenue for advisory, and businesses under $2M of earnings for brokerage, across most industries, with 100-plus transactions and $1B-plus closed. The two bands use different measures, and the sub-$2M lane a self-funded buyer would use is the one not advertised.
- Publishes a size, and not one a buyer can use.
- Seller Fee
- Publishes somebody else's range. The only percentages on its own site describe the industry or other firms rather than itself, on pages that ask what selling costs, so a number there is easy to read as a disclosure it never made.
- Buyer Fee
- Says nothing about a buyer fee. Its buyer-facing pages say nothing either way about what a buyer pays.
- Works For
- Buyer list only. Invites buyers onto a list to see or be alerted to its own listings. That is access, not advocacy: the firm is still paid by the seller.
- Before It Shows You Anything
- Wants an account rather than an NDA. An account is the real gate rather than a signed document, and the registration form is where the qualifying questions live.
- Registration rather than an NDA. The form asks source of funds, capital available and accredited-investor status, and the gate stands in front of the LIST rather than the financials: every listing URL serves a login page, while the home page publishes revenue and earnings for each business it represents. The numbers are visible and the listings are not.
- Roadmap Stages
- 4. Source & Screen Deals
Pros and Cons
Pros
- Publishes revenue and earnings to the dollar for every business on its home page, before any registration, which most national shops do not
- Team mixes former owners, public accountants, and middle-market bankers rather than pure salespeople
- Offers both a broker opinion of value and certified valuations, useful before committing to a process
- Named to Axial's top-broker lists in 2024 and 2025
Cons
- Fees are consultation-gated: a seller cannot compare their cost against a local broker without getting on the phone
- Success-rate and award claims are self-reported or drawn from lists with their own commercial interests; treat them as marketing
- Sell-side first: a buyer in their process is the counterparty, not the client
- The listings themselves sit behind a buyer login: every listing URL serves the same login page, so the home page teaser is as far as an unregistered buyer gets
What Searchers Say
Recent community threads surface no verified complaint pattern, and no client-review aggregate is publicly reachable. Axial's own league tables ranked the firm ninth on the 2024 and first-half 2025 lists and do not list it on the two most recent, a trajectory worth asking about. Fee specifics reported by review sites could not be verified against any primary source and are omitted per the directory's pricing rule.
How to Approach
Raincatcher is a brokerage, and it works for the seller rather than for you, so this is how that side of the table comes in and what it is deciding about you.
The Typical Arc
- A teaser and an NDA, before you see the name of the business.
- A call with the listing broker, who is screening you as much as answering you.
- The CIM, then a seller meeting the broker schedules and usually sits in on.
- Your offer, carried by the broker to the seller they represent.
What It Weighs
- Whether your money is real: how much is cash, and where the rest is coming from.
- Whether your criteria are specific enough to match against a listing.
- How fast you move, because the fee arrives on a close rather than on a conversation.
How to Prepare
- Write the one page a broker asks for before you inquire. Buyer Profile Builder
- Set criteria specific enough for a listing to match. Buy Box Builder
- Know what you can pay before the CIM lands. Business Valuation Calculator