> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://intelligence.artificialrealitymedia.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # The stack one M&A broker runs on a $100 subscription - URL: https://intelligence.artificialrealitymedia.com/best-ai-tools-ma-brokerage-2026/ - Published: 2026-09-02T12:06:00.000Z - Updated: 2026-09-02T12:06:00.000Z - Description: Claude on a Mac mini the firm owns, Codex for what Claude will not do, Zoho for relationships. The full named stack of an Austin M&A brokerage. - Author: Galina Fendikevich - Tags: M&A advisory, #For AI Buyers, #AI tools, #Import 2026-09-03 13:12 [Claude](https://claude.ai/?ref=intelligence.artificialrealitymedia.com) runs the firm, on a Mac mini the firm owns. [Codex](https://openai.com/codex?ref=intelligence.artificialrealitymedia.com) handles the jobs Claude will not do. [Perplexity](https://www.perplexity.ai/?ref=intelligence.artificialrealitymedia.com) does research, [ChatGPT](https://chatgpt.com/?ref=intelligence.artificialrealitymedia.com) makes images, [Obsidian](https://obsidian.md/?ref=intelligence.artificialrealitymedia.com) arrived last month, and [Zoho](https://zoho.com/?ref=intelligence.artificialrealitymedia.com) holds the relationships. That is the stack Christine McDannell uses to run The Magnolia Firm, an M&A brokerage in Austin that sells profitable tech companies, on roughly $200 a month of subscriptions after cutting payroll by 83%. Every tool below was named by McDannell on the record. Artificial Reality, the AI buyer-evidence podcast hosted by Galina Fendikevich, reports what one operator uses. Inclusion is not endorsement. ## What does she run the firm on? **Claude** is the centre of it, in two accounts at roughly $100 a month each. She moved in March after three years on ChatGPT — "I went all in on Claude, which was the smartest thing to do. I didn't get distracted with any other tools" — and runs it locally, on a separate Mac mini bought for the firm because the work involves company financials and sensitive deal information. The machine lives with her colleague in Toronto; she works on it by remote access. What it does: an email agent that checks every 30 minutes and drafts, a morning agent that reads her calendar and produces a research brief on each prospective seller, a valuation skill encoding her industry knowledge and past deals, due diligence sweeps across public sources including social comments and litigation, and video editing. The limitation she names is browser permissions: "Claude has some barriers with like Facebook ... Claude makes you do this allow, allow, allow. Like you cannot set it to just go on its own, for Facebook." ## Why does she pay for two frontier subscriptions? Because of that permission difference, not indecision. She added **Codex** roughly two weeks before the interview at $100 a month, for bookkeeping and Facebook ads: "Codex will do start-to-finish brand new ads without me touching a thing. No like allow." That is a purchasing decision driven by permission architecture, which appears in no feature comparison anywhere. ## What else is in the stack? - **Claude Cowork** — where she works daily, and the surprise of the interview. She put a [Google](https://www.google.com/?ref=intelligence.artificialrealitymedia.com) Drive folder of phone footage in and asked for branded reels with captions; it made them, roughly 80% complete, needing re-prompting on design. Her caption transcription split test found it more accurate than [Canva](https://canva.com/?ref=intelligence.artificialrealitymedia.com). She reports it named Remotion as its underlying video tooling when asked. - **Claude Chrome extension** — navigating web applications in front of her, including her CRM: "when I send email blasts, I'll pull the screen out ... it'll give me a full report like a CMO would do." - **ChatGPT** — three years as her primary tool, now images. Leaving was hard because "GPT knows me so well," so she exported the full chat history and built a voice DNA profile: a hundred-question interview taking about three hours. "It will clone you. It will legit clone you." - **Perplexity** — "perplexity for anything research based." Named without elaboration. - [**Gemini**](https://gemini.google.com/?ref=intelligence.artificialrealitymedia.com) — "Gemini was for images for a long time, but now I moved it to GPT." She describes taking Gemini images into another model to remove the corner watermark. That is her described practice, not an Artificial Reality recommendation, and removing a provenance marker may conflict with a platform's terms. - **Obsidian** — added in the last month, still being set up, with help planned at a session of the AI implementation club she is involved with. - **Zoho** — the CRM, five years. "Everybody laughs when I say this, but we use Zoho." Heavily customized through an agency, integrated with a text phone system and the phone itself. "It works really great, surprisingly ... And it's cheaper than HubSpot." Her read on the alternatives: Salesforce is "too robust, it's for banking, it's for healthcare," HubSpot is expensive. - **Fable** — deep in use, then discontinued. "When Fable got shut off, I was deep in Fable and I was blown away. And then they turn it off." - **Canva** — used as a benchmark, and lost the transcription comparison. - **Also running** — [Zapier](https://zapier.com/?ref=intelligence.artificialrealitymedia.com) connecting Zoho to other applications; Trello for project management, exported wholesale to feed a leadership-feedback analysis; Slack, Telegram and iMessage as where her agents ping her; Google Drive as the source folder for video; and a voice agent named Alex, built for the firm, not yet deployed because of latency. The vendor is not named. ## What should you take from this stack? Two things, if you run a small professional services firm. First, the routing. She does not look for one tool that does everything. She keeps two paid subscriptions and sends work to whichever one does not fight her, and she split-tests the same prompt across models as a habit rather than a project. Second, Fable. She built a workflow on a product that was switched off. She runs a firm on tools she does not control and has restructured payroll around them, and she names pricing risk explicitly. Discontinuation risk is the one she lived through and did not name. Before you cut a role, write down what you would do the week a tool in this list disappears. ## Where this comes from S1E5: How she cut her payroll by 83% using one AI agent — the full interview with Christine McDannell. Listen or watch: [YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1VO7nWtzNEU&ref=intelligence.artificialrealitymedia.com), [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/6E4sAUyfk4X5gUqEtzhL8o?ref=intelligence.artificialrealitymedia.com) or [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-she-cut-her-payroll-by-83-using-this-one-ai-agent/id6780699025?i=1000776953676&ref=intelligence.artificialrealitymedia.com).