A VC Just Cold-Called You; Now What?

One of our founders called me.  “An analyst just called me.  He works for a VC fund tied to an investment bank.  He’s interested in our company and is keen to know more. How much information should I share? “ CEOs need to know what they’re getting into when they talk with VCs, particularly if...

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CRM Systems and Private Equity Deal Sourcing

Preqin and LexisNexis Enterprise Solutions just released a report on “CRM Systems and Private Equity Deal Sourcing”, based on a survey of 63 private equity funds. They report that 84% of respondents claim to source over 20% of their opportunities through proprietary deal flow. Based on our research, I think that these respondents are taking...

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Conference Notes on Sourcing Deal Flow & Developing New Business for Private Equity

I enjoyed participating in last week’s Capital Roundtable Private Equity Masterclass on “Best Practices for Sourcing Quality Deal Flow & Developing New Business” (May 26th, 2011). Our star intern Adam Kalamchi took detailed notes, below. High Road Capital Partners Deal Sourcing Keynote View more presentations Chairman’s Keynote: How to Win -The Five S’s of Successful...

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Update on our study on deal sourcing

It’s been very exciting to see such a strong response to our recent research study on “Best Practices in Private Equity and Venture Capital Deal Origination”, published in the Winter 2010 Journal of Private Equity. To our knowledge, this is the first systematic study on this topic; we have not found any other in-depth research...

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How the Networked Economy is Changing the Deal Origination ROI Paradigm

Peter Lehrman of AxialMarket posted this must-read Powerpoint on the evolution of private equity deal sourcing. I definitely agree with the points he makes here. Most interesting are his estimates of the cost for different methods of deal sourcing. We discuss in more depth a lot of these ideas in The Virtual Handshake. Deal Origination...

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How a Private Equity Fund Uses Social Media for Building its Investment Pipeline and Raising Capital

Most private equity funds (and the equipment finance industry) are well behind the VC industry with regard to their use of social media. Jeff Bussgang, General Partner, Flybridge Capital Partners, calculates that of the approximately 1,000 venture capitalists in the US actively seeking deals, 10-15% blog.  Sarah Tavel, Senior Associate, Bessemer Venture Partners, calls this...

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