STEELMAN
Data rooms

Your data room is
a Dropbox folder.

Almost every deal in the country is sent out as a shared folder with a login on it. The step up from that is a portal your brokerage licensed in 1998. Neither of them argues anything — they store files and hope somebody reads them properly.

What exists today

There are three options, and two of them are the same age as the fax.

Most deals

A shared folder

Dropbox, Drive, or a data room product that is a shared folder with a price on it. Everybody has the link. Nobody knows who opened what.

  • Access is a link, so access is everyone
  • No record of who read what, or when
  • Eleven PDFs and a spreadsheet
  • Nothing in it makes your case
The step up

A brokerage portal

Real access control, finally — wrapped in an interface that predates the phone the buyer is holding, and a process that takes a week.

  • Email the broker, then wait
  • Print the NDA, sign it, send it back
  • Invent a username and a password
  • Then find a folder tree from 1998
This

A Steelman portal

The argument and the evidence in the same place, opening on a phone, with the terms signed on the way in.

  • Ask, sign, and you are reading in minutes
  • Every document, drawing and video opens in place
  • Access granted per person, withdrawn per person
  • Every view recorded, by name
Getting in

The incumbents are not complicated. They are slow.

Same four steps in both columns. The difference is how many days sit between them, and how many places the person has to go.

A portal, today
  1. 01Email the broker to askWhenever they see it
  2. 02Sign an NDA and send it backA day, if they print
  3. 03Wait for somebody to set up an accountA day or two
  4. 04Register, invent a password, log inThen find the files
Typically three to five days, across four applications.
A Steelman portal
  1. 01Open the link and say who you areSeconds
  2. 02Sign the terms on the same screenA minute
  3. 03The client taps approve, on their phoneWhenever they look
  4. 04A link arrives and signs you inNo password, ever
Typically the same afternoon, in one place.
The whole thing, end to end

Six screens. That is the entire product.

These are photographs of the running software, not drawings of it.

01

They ask

One link, in your listing and your email footer. Anyone may ask. Nobody gets in until you say so, and you see who they act for before you decide anything.

The public request page asking for name, email, company and who the person acts for
02

They sign, on the same screen

Your terms in full, agreed with a typed name. No printing, no posting back, no second application. A record is kept of the exact wording accepted — changing the terms later never rewrites what was already agreed.

The same page with the confidentiality agreement shown in full and signed with a typed name
03

Or generate the terms in the first place

A standard form written for your file, with the governing law set from the province you selected. It is a starting point for your counsel, not legal advice — and your own wording is always allowed instead.

The client's screen generating a confidentiality agreement, with the request queue above it
04

You approve, in one tap

The request arrives already signed, so the only thing left is yes or no. That is a thing somebody will actually do from a phone in a car park — which is the whole difference between this and a week of email.

The approval queue showing one person waiting, with their terms already accepted
05

Everything goes in, and you decide twice per file

Statements, rent rolls, drawings, photography, video. Every type accepted. For each one: do we build from it, and do your own clients ever see it. Separate questions, separate answers — and a third tick for whether they may keep a copy.

The file intake screen with three uploaded files, each with a note and its tick boxes
06

They read it

Documents inline, drawings and photographs full screen, video on the page. This buyer sees two exhibits, not three — the internal note was never shared, and there is nothing on the page to suggest it exists.

The portal as a recipient sees it, listing only the shared exhibits
The part nobody else bothers with

A record of who read what, and a clock that respects your regulator.

Signed, and provable

Terms accepted on the way in, with a real signature and an audit certificate — not a tick box. You can show exactly what each person agreed to, and when.

Every view, by name

Most data rooms treat access logs as an admin curiosity. For a lender or a receiver they are evidence — and for you they are intelligence about who is actually working the file.

Kept as long as you must

Set the province and the retention follows your own regulator's minimum, free — three years in Alberta, seven in BC, six in Ontario. Nothing is ever deleted without telling you first.

Cancel the data room. Send one link instead.

Send us a live file and we will tell you within a day whether there is an edge in it worth communicating. If there is not, we will say so and charge you nothing.

Start a conversationSee a worked example