Curious to get opinions here. If you're in the Venture (or Growth) space, have bankers ever provided value to you outside of exits? If not, could you see them doing so?
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Growth stage here -- Most bankers just get in the way. While many of the banked deals we look at come from legit firms (Raymond James, Cannacord Genuity, etc) we are still far enough downmarket that we frequently encounter unsophisticated boutiques that will challenge every point and overall gum up the process.
The biggest value add we get from bankers are if they’re repping a bootstrapped business and did all the work of sanitizing the data before engaging sellers. That shit is painful to do on your own.
I would add also helpful to get their books of comps and needle them for benchmarking metrics
Second that point about cleaning data, man some of these boostrapped businesses come in with some really messed up data.
Bankers definitely make the process a lot more competitive and for the fund I work for, we haven't invested in a banked deal yet (likely due to LMM focus) but we have actually had some decent exits (3x+) lately with the help of some MM banks and one is even helping us set up a SPAC. I'd say it definitely depends but we saw some value in using LMM/MM bankers.
Curious what sector you guys focus on?
B2B SaaS like majority of the growth shops out there
It really depends. In LMM so it’s naturally all over the place. I wouldn’t really buy a shopped deal but I do keep in touch with a handful of MDs focused on our vertical. They are very useful for random data points I need
I’m in venture, so I can’t speak for the growth guys, but no.
No as in they don’t and likely couldn’t provide any value?
Exactly. Bankers add a ton of value to certain processes, but they have no place in the early-stage / venture investment process
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