The deal-sourcing flow is a three-step architecture, and being honest about which steps ship is what keeps a buyer from planning around a feature that isn't there yet. Step one is the profile — the fuel, fully shipped. Step two is the matching — the scout that scores fit, shipped but running on a daily batch rather than continuously. Step three is the alert — the trigger that notifies the buyer — and this is the step that's partial. The closest shipped analog is a daily curated outreach, not an instant notification, and a buyer who plans around real-time alerts today is planning around something that isn't built.
§ 01 · The three-step architectureWhat ships, what doesn't.
| Step | Role | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Profile (fuel) | The buyer's stated appetite | Shipped |
| Matching (scout) | Scores fit against listings | Shipped — daily batch |
| Alert (trigger) | Notifies the buyer of a fit | Coming soon |
The architecture is worth understanding because it tells a buyer where the value is today and where it's coming. The fuel and the scout are real and working — the profile drives matching, and matching produces a curated set of fits. The trigger — the part that would ping a buyer the instant a fitting agency lists — is the piece on the roadmap. Naming the gap honestly matters: the alternative is a buyer who assumes they'll be notified in real time, misses the daily outreach that actually exists, and concludes the system doesn't work when in fact they were using the wrong mental model.
§ 02 · What ships todayThe curated outreach.
Today's channel is a daily curated match outreach: fitting buyers receive an email when their profile matches a new listing, delivered as a batch rather than the instant a listing goes live. The threshold that qualifies a buyer for the outreach is a 10% overlap between the buyer's appetite and the listing — enough fit to be worth surfacing. The honest framing, the one worth using with a buyer, is direct: "A real-time notification system is being built. Today, Pro subscribers receive curated match outreach via email when their profile matches a new listing." That's not a hedge — it's an accurate description of a channel that genuinely works, just on a daily cadence rather than a real-time one.
§ 03 · What's comingThe real-time trigger.
Real-time, in-platform listing alerts are coming soon — not shipped. The roadmap is clear: a listing publishes, a match computation runs, and qualifying buyers above the 10% threshold get notified by email or in-app. The ingredients exist; they're not yet wired together. Until they are, the daily curated outreach is the channel — and calling the future feature "coming soon" rather than "available" is the difference between an honest pitch and an over-claim.
The coming feature is essentially today's channel, re-pointed: the same match computation that drives the daily outreach, but triggered by a listing's publication and delivered to the buyer rather than batched seller-side. That's a meaningful upgrade — speed matters in a competitive sourcing market — but it's a roadmap item, and there are several things explicitly not on offer today that a buyer shouldn't expect: an in-platform alert feed, alert-depth tiering by subscription plan, or a "set it and forget it" pipeline. The Pro plan today gates directory visibility, not alert depth. Being precise about that boundary is what keeps the buyer's expectations matched to the product.
§ 04 · The first-mover proxyBe a complete Pro profile.
If real-time alerts are the future and daily curated outreach is the present, the practical question is how a buyer captures first-mover advantage now. The answer is the proxy: be a complete, Pro profile, because Pro subscribers are the buyers surfaced early in a listing's lifecycle through the curated outreach. The buyer who has filled out their three matching dimensions accurately and holds a Pro subscription is the one who appears in the outreach when a fitting listing lands — which is today's version of being first. The real-time trigger will sharpen that advantage when it ships; until then, profile completeness plus Pro status is the lever a buyer actually controls, and it's the one that puts them in front of a fitting seller while the listing is still fresh.
◆
Terminology on this shelf
- Three-step architecture
- Profile (fuel), matching (scout), and alert (trigger) — the first two shipped, the third partial.
- Curated match outreach
- The shipped channel — a daily, batch-delivered email to fitting Pro subscribers.
- 10% threshold
- The overlap that qualifies a buyer for the match outreach.
- Real-time alert
- The roadmap feature — listing publishes, match runs, qualifying buyers notified — coming soon, not shipped.
- First-mover proxy
- Being a complete Pro profile — surfaced early in a listing's life via the curated outreach.
- Pro gating
- What the Pro plan controls today — directory visibility, not alert depth.