How Private Equity Funds Are and Should Be Using Social Media

  Can professional investors use social media?  Or, is social media strictly for teenagers and staying in touch with your friends? Historically, institutional investors kept their investing strategy and their activities very discreet. Today, however, some are aggressively employing social media tools to discuss their strategies, deals in the pipeline, and even their political views...

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Why We Chose Salesforce CRM Over Zoho

I finally did it: I’ve moved my contact database over to the web.  After extensive research of different CRM solutions (thanks BestVendor), we’re working with Salesforce.com.  We also used Salesforce heavily at one of my prior companies, Circle of Experts. I’ve been a loyal Act user for my personal CRM system since 1996, and have...

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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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Expert Networks Rollup – Business Connect China merges with Evalueserve Circle of Experts and Tribeca Insights

Congratulations to Business Connect China, which is merging with my old company, Evalueserve Circle of Experts, and Tribeca Insights to form a new consolidated expert network, Advantus Global. Integrity Research reports, “At the high water mark, there were over 45 expert networks. By our count, the number has shrunk to 37, of which 7 cater...

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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 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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