The Advisor Roster
The advisor a company can hire is a function of its size, and the advisor it hires shapes the price it gets. When a $5B cyber platform sells, the seller hires Goldman, Morgan Stanley, or Qatalyst — banks whose brand and balance sheet are the product at that size. When a $400M ARR security company runs a process, it hires Houlihan Lokey, William Blair, or a tech-strong boutique. And when a founder-owned cyber company at $20–250M of value wants to find the right strategic acquirer, it hires a specialist — a cyber-exclusive shop that knows the buyer set personally. What follows is the named map of who plays where, building on the tiers defined in 10a and the processes in 10b.
The three arenas, with the names in each
Bulge-bracket & elite tech banks ($1B+ deals). At the top of the market, mandates go to firms whose franchise, financing capability, and CEO-level relationships clear the bar for a board-level transaction:
- Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, J.P. Morgan — the bulge bracket; lead the largest cyber take-privates, carve-outs, and IPOs; bring underwriting, financing, and fairness-opinion gravitas.
- Qatalyst Partners — the elite tech-M&A boutique; outsized share of the largest software/security sell-sides; the name a board hires when the goal is a maximal strategic premium.
- Centerview, Evercore, Moelis, Lazard, PJT — elite independent advisors; conflict-free advice on the biggest deals, strong in take-privates and special situations.
- Houlihan Lokey — straddles elite and mid-market; leads the technology M&A volume game (on the order of ~500+ software deals a year at an average ticket in the ~$400M range per the 2026 landscape data) and carries a deep restructuring bench — the differentiator that matters when a cyber asset's growth stalls and a sale becomes a workout (Aventis Advisors, Houlihan Lokey cyber).
Tech-focused mid-market banks (~$100M–$1B deals). The workhorses of software and cyber M&A — sector depth without bulge-bracket size minimums:
- William Blair — tech-strong mid-market; high deal count across growth software and security.
- Union Square Advisors — technology-only, with real depth in AI/data infrastructure, GRC, and vertical software (ZoomInfo).
- AGC Partners — prolific software/cyber boutique; 28 deals closed in 2025, split exactly 14 PE-platform / 14 strategic — a useful tell that the mid-market buyer set is now half sponsors, half strategics.
- DBO Partners, Arma Partners (now part of Houlihan Lokey), Shea & Company, Software Equity Group, GCA/Houlihan-adjacent shops — sector specialists with strong software franchises.
Cyber-specialist & lower-mid-market boutiques (<$250M, founder-owned). The arena where personal knowledge of the cyber buyer set beats brand:
- Momentum Cyber — the category-defining cyber-exclusive bank, whose CYBERcloud database tracks 5,000+ cyber companies and whose "Cybersecurity Almanac" is an industry reference.
- Solganick & Co. — software & tech-services investment bank with a dedicated cybersecurity practice and a widely read quarterly cyber M&A report (Solganick cyber).
- Kroll — sell-side/buy-side advisory plus the deepest incident-response/DFIR bench, which feeds proprietary deal flow; publishes a quarterly cyber-sector M&A insights report.
- Stonepipe, 7 Mile Advisors, Equiteq, Aventis Advisors — lower-mid-market and tech-services specialists serving founder-owned and bootstrapped sellers.