Problems along the deal life cycle
Hi all,
With a number of startups popping up over the last few years, namely the below being the biggest ones, I was wondering what the main real pain points that people experience across the deal life cycle / really manual stupid problems. There are the obvious ones around excel and powerpoint but what are really niche things you would only know if you worked in the alts space?
I've thought about expert calls and the problems there. Looking at a few areas really that would fold into a bigger product 1) Tool for scheduling the expert calls in a quicker fashion 2) Getting you connected to the right analyst quickly 3) Applying an LLM to the call transcripts to parse out summaries and themes 4) A repository that stretches across multiple expert call providers allowing you to pull all your calls together and see if your credit team are having calls on similar topics 5) Semantic search across the transcripts
The expert calls are only one pain point that I've picked up for conversation but what are the other big obvious ones that would exist across the deal life cycle and different coverage teams i.e. Private Credit, Private Equity, Growth, VC etc.
Wokelo, Keye, Dili.ai, Clarum, Rogo, ModelML, ThinkChain.ai, Noetica
Aren't all these painpoints being addressed by Alphasights and Third Bridge already? They both have scheduling tools if you don't want to schedule via email, AI transcription, etc. And Tegus already has that DB of transcripts you can search, while Alpha and TB are building theirs as well. Even GLG has one such DB (I've trialled all of them, also incl. Guidepoint).
I know GLG is bigger in the US and I've found them to be a laggard in terms of tech here, but I don't think this is the case anymore for the likes of Alpha and TB. So I would be quite cautious in terms of launching something that addresses the above when they're already on their way.
In general, I had bschool colleagues who were interested in launching the next expert network and I wouldn't advise that you do so, honestly the space has gotten pretty darn crowded over the last few years and it's a battle on an individual basis in terms of market share. To be very concrete: we are an UMM/brushing on MF firm, and we have contracts with Alpha, TB, Dialectica, Guidepoint, GLG and Tegus. For every associate in the team, you literally have account managers badgering them and every associate has a favourite. On a live deal where we do lots of calls, we reach out to like 3 of them and then it's also a battle.
Thanks a mill! From our research no they aren't. Me and two other tech friends (one cyber the other LLM) went and interviewed 30 Investment Associates we know (and are continuing the interviews). The main complaint we've heard (sample size is still small at 30) was that was no tracking of themes and trends (from call to call) and that the summarisation was relatively week atm. And that there was no real tracking of the calls as they go across a deal life cycle or from deal to deal (this could be completely wrong but was their view) .
Agree that AlphaSights, GLG, Thirdbridge, Temus either have or are building the transcript repository but we haven't come across a solution that is internal to your firm i.e. your calls only and applying the LLM tech. Temus's solution is great if you're a HF / AM player who trades in and out of names but a deal specific repository internal to your firm. But could be off the ball here?
It's not our intention to build an expert network, as agree far too packed and would just get cannibalised. In reality we're looking to build all in one platform for buy-and-sell-side DD management. Think of your VDR from the sellside and the buyside diligence consolidated into one that you can query and pre prompts questions, abnormalities. To get there though we're figuring out the easiest problem to fix but the most common across firms that lets us scale and build something into a full solution.
We've just started building something and starting to think about a design partner (A fund that would provide iterative / really detailed process but get our product for free as we build it) and are continuing to do user interviews
The most ridiculous one is Rogo...they raised a $18M series A for "chat GPT for public filings".
It's absolutely wild. Lazard was their first customer, but turns out the founder's best friend's dad was the CEO of Lazard and just pushed it down everyone's throat.
That's how the founder got his first job too. Who knew? Guess nepotism can get you your first job, and even your first Series A. He should definitely use it to his advantage, but ultimately whichever irresponsible VC who led that round is going to pay the price...the two people I know who have used the product think it absolutely sucks...
lol not true. my gf works at thoma and it looks like CVP is on their site?
edmundsec summarizes filings, and it is free. Kind of sucks to use though.
Here's a litany of ideas:
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