If I were redoing the diligence process, I’d start with TikTok, not the data room.

Not because middle-market brands are going viral (they’re not). But because real-world signals live online now, and they’re wildly underused in diligence.

When we’re looking at $10M–$100M revenue consumer and services businesses, here’s where the real risk and opportunity hide:

Google reviews: Customers post photos, rants, and essays. Goldmine.

Reddit: Search “[brand name] + scam” or “[brand name] + experience.” You’ll learn more than any NPS score.

Glassdoor: The fastest way to smell a toxic culture or a broken ops function.

YouTube: Look for DIY reviews, how-tos, and “here’s why I switched” videos.

Facebook community groups: Where reputation lives for local services.

BBB and Trustpilot: Yeah, they’re noisy—but persistent patterns scream truth.

Job boards: Can tell you if a sales team is churning or if hiring’s been frozen for months.

Google Trends: Is interest in the brand growing? Flatlining? Declining?

None of this shows up in a CIM. But it does show up post-close when CAC spikes and CSAT tanks.

And here’s the bonus: AI is about to make all of this stupidly easy.

It’ll summarize thousands of reviews, scrape forums, cluster sentiment, flag red flags, in minutes.

You’ll be able to run a real-time “brand health check” before your intern has even downloaded the data room ZIP file.

And yet, most firms are still stuck paying $250K for quality of earnings and zero for digital signals.

We’re not buying spreadsheets.
We’re buying belief, trust, and momentum.......and those show up in feeds, not footnotes.