The Ultimate Guide to

Generating Strong Inbound

Private Equity Deal Flow

info@4degrees.ai
(877) 733-8465
30 N LaSalle St Chicago, IL
60602
 Table of contents
Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
The Best Deal Flow Comes From Your Network . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

A Framework for Generating More Deals From your Network. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

Step 1: Set your Focus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

Step 2: Deepen your Connections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

1-on-1 Relationship Building . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

Community Building . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Hosting Events . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

Digital Community Building . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

Physical Space Creation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

Gifts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

Step 3: Grow your Network . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 0

Content

Guest Posting. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 0

Writing Email Newsletters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 0

Maintaining a Blog . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 1

Podcasting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 2

Video . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 2

Social Media

LinkedIn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 3
Facebook. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 3

Twitter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 4
Attending Events. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 4

Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 5

The Ultimate Guide to Generating Strong Inbound Private Equity Deal Flow 1
INTRODUCTION
The Best Deal Flow Comes From Your Network
In the investment, professional services, and sales industries, the search is always on for the
next great outreach and outbound deal flow sourcing solution. As a result, it’s easy to overlook
the fundamentals that have governed how deals have been done for centuries. One of these
simple premises: people do business with people that they like, trust, and respect.

This axiom holds doubly true for deals in the private markets. Investment deals are no ordi-
nary transaction – they are generally large, distinctive, and have massive long-term implica-
tions for everyone involved. There’s a reason why people describe investment in the private
markets as akin to a marriage. These elements make establishing relationships and trust
even more critical in each step of the deal process – from deal sourcing, and due diligence, all
the way to exit.

This perspective isn’t just axiomatic but supported by academic research – with multiple
studies in this arena showing that most high-quality deals come from or are influenced by
your network.

So if your network is the strongest and most important engine you have for generating
private equity deal flow – how do you make that engine more powerful?

A Framework for Generating More Deals From

Your Network
While human relationships are complex and multifaceted, making your network a more
valuable source of high-quality deal flow can be broken down into a few simple dimensions:

1. The number of people who have a relationship with you (direct or via your reputation)
This can be both direct, forged by shared experience and 1-1 time, or more passive – writers,
artists, and others with a massive audience have a relationship with their fans, even though
they may not have had a direct engagement.

2. The relevance of those people to your goals and objectives

While relationships are valuable for their own sake, and many people have ways they can
create value for you – there’s no denying that some people’s areas of focus will be more over-
lapping with yours. Cultivating those relationships (and adding more like them!), results in
more deals flowing your way.

3. The strength of those relationships (+ how you treat people)

You may be ‘connected’ to many relevant people, but when it comes to making a referral,
those people will default to those they have a real connection with or see as valuable. As a
result, the strength of your relationships – the personal connection you have with them and
the value you bring to each other – is arguably the most important driver in getting inbound
deal flow from your network. Importantly, a relationship’s strength isn’t static – connections
you invest in can flourish, and relationships you ignore can quickly decay.

The Ultimate Guide to Generating Strong Inbound Private Equity Deal Flow 2
This framework also suggests a set of levers for how you can continually make your network a
more powerful asset for generating private equity deal flow:

1. Determine where to spend your time and resources

2. Deepen your connections in those domains through intentional effort
3. Grow your sphere of influence in those areas to expose yourselves to more pathways
to generate deals.
A note on the tactics to come – while we’ve put each in only one of the three categories
(growing your network, making your network relevant, deepening your connections), they
can be deployed across multiple. For instance, building a digital community serves to deepen
existing relationships and expose new, relevant ones!

Step 1:
Set Your
Focus

A fundamental step in creating more investment opportunities and deal origination from
your network is determining your investment strategy and focus. After all, if you don’t know
where you’re going, any route will take you there! Some elements to help you inform your
focus:

Passion: relationship building and network curation is a long-term game. It’s far easier to
invest for the long-term in areas you genuinely find interesting. In addition, your relation-
ships will be higher quality – founded on shared interests where you’ll have more to offer.

Opportunity: finding great deals requires spotting and seizing the opportunity others
don’t see (or see as clearly). Your belief around where opportunities are should inform
where you choose to dive deeper.

Rules of engagement: none of us operate in a vacuum, and so there are likely constraints
and biases that mean some opportunities may be off-limits (explicitly or implicitly). These
could be defined by stage, sector, geography, or any number of different attributes – but
have implications for where your time is well spent.

Advantages: your life experiences are unique, and likely give you differentiated access,
skills, or inclinations vs. your peers. You can double down on those advantages as you build
your network.

The Ultimate Guide to Generating Strong Inbound Private Equity Deal Flow 3
Once you have a set of areas in mind, you’ll want to identify the relevant sources of potential
investments or deal flow in these domains. A few categories that commonly are great referral
sources:

Domain experts: for any particular industry vertical or function, there are usually experts in
these areas with deep networks and knowledge. People ask them for advice, they dedicate
resources to staying on top of the major and rising players – and as a result, they’re often
aware of great companies before they become broadly known.

Fellow investors: private equity funds, venture capitalists, and other investors are spending
as much time as you are trying to find great investments – but not every great company
will be a fit for them. This could be due to size, valuation, stage, industry focus, prior experi-
ences, or a number of other issues. As a result, other investors – even those that are ‘com-
petitive’ to you – can end up being good sources of deals.

Service providers: lawyers, accountants, insurance brokers, local banks, and others who
work with business owners likely know of impressive, under-the-radar companies. Moreo-
ver, these professionals work every day to become trusted advisors to those owners –
making them key sources of influence in beginning a conversation.

Intermediaries: investment bankers, business brokers, and M&A advisors exist for the pur-
pose of finding companies that are ready to go through a transaction process and helping
them find the right investor for them. While in some domains (e.g., venture capital firms),
it’s far better for the management team themselves to handle the process – these interme-
diaries come into contact with potentially relevant companies all the time as a result of
their work. This audience is especially relevant for private equity firms.

Corporate Development + Business Development teams: in larger organizations, these

departments are tasked with understanding the ecosystem of relevant players to their
business. As a result, members of these teams often have unique insight into under-the-ra-
dar private companies or startups that are relevant to their world, key trends they’re moni-
toring, and where their acquisition and partnership interests lie.

Your portfolio companies: given their proximity to you, other operators in industries you
like, and your faith in their judgment, portfolio company team members can be precious
sources of deal flow and information.

Once you have laid out your understanding of the relevant deal sources, you can assess your
existing relationship network and how it’s currently driving your sourcing deals:

First, you should understand where you are winning. Some questions that can help
illuminate this:

Where are most of your quality deals coming from? If you were to analyze the deal
flow you received from inbound sources over the past year, which sources are driv-
ing most of your volume, especially those that are making it further down the funnel?
This can be easily identified if you are using the right deal management software.

The Ultimate Guide to Generating Strong Inbound Private Equity Deal Flow 4
 Where is your “share” of deal flow the highest? Some people may not send a high
volume of referrals, due to the nature of their work and network. But when they are
connected to companies that have successfully raised, are they putting these on
your radar?

Qualitatively, which domains do you feel confident about the strength and depth
of your relationships?

You’ll also need to identify where the gaps in your current network are. Some questions to
help identify these areas:

What deals did you miss? A data-driven way to ground this conversation is to use
Pitchbook, Crunchbase, Sutton Place Strategies, or similar, and pull together a list of
deals completed in your strike zone in the past year that you never saw. You can
then cross-reference that list of deals with the participants and your network –
allowing you to identify relationship gaps.

Where are you missing coverage? If you were to slice your network by deal source
type, geography, industry, or other areas of focus – where does it seem you have little
density? In some cases, that may be a function of the domain – for instance, there
may be few accountants that work closely with AI companies specifically. In other
domains, this may point to an opportunity to bolster your deal flow network.

What categories do you have weak relationships with? Even where you have rela-
tionships, it’s likely that some are weaker than others, which has implications on the
volume and quality of deals you receive.

From here, you can make a plan, composed of doubling down on your strengths, while
attacking some of the gaps you’ve identified. One way to make your prioritization decisions
easier is to run them through the following test:

1. How many new quality deals would come my way by successfully building (or strength-
ening this relationship)?

2. How difficult would it be to sufficiently strengthen them to see those benefits?

With a plan in hand to generate more deal flow, it’s time to execute. The next two sections
(“Deepen your connections” and “Grow your network”) give you the tactics to help you
achieve relationship building and deal generating success.

The Ultimate Guide to Generating Strong Inbound Private Equity Deal Flow 5
Step 2:
Deepen Your
Connections

1-on-1 Relationship Building

While relationships can get stronger in a group setting (which we’ll cover later on), connect-
ing with someone 1-on-1 is always a powerful way of getting to know someone on a deeper
As you engage, it’s easy to focus on the transactional and tactical (e.g., what deal flow are you
looking for, and how does that overlap with my goals?). However, remember that people do
business with others they trust and respect – if this person has the choice between referring a
deal to you and someone else, it’s unlikely this approach wins you a referral. Instead, devote
real time to building both a personal and professional connection. Some topics to help you
create that:

Personal backstory: Where did they grow up? What has their personal and profes-
sional journey been to get to this point?

Interests and family life: What are their priorities outside of work? Do they have a
family? What are their hobbies?

Their objectives: What does success look like for them, both personally and for their
team? What are they focused on? What are they trying to learn more about? Where
could they use additional support and resources?

When you have a richer perspective on who a person is and what they care about, you not
only build relationships that last beyond any given deal – you’re far better positioned to create
value for each other (including deal flow and referrals).
You can’t just expect that richer perspective to automatically translate into a robust (and
deal-generating) relationship. Most relationships only get stronger through regular interac-
tions that reinforce your connection. Some ways to help your relationship go further:

Help them meet their goals: this can take many forms on both a personal and
professional level

Sending them research reports, news, and other notable information about an
area they’re trying to get up to speed on – or that ties to a personal passion of
theirs

The Ultimate Guide to Generating Strong Inbound Private Equity Deal Flow 6
 Amplifying their work – sharing content they produce and purchasing products and
services they create

Connecting them with experts that can be a valuable part of their network
Making introductions and referrals to others in your network that fit their area of focus

Show a genuine interest in them and their lives, and show how they’ve impacted yours:

Connect over hobbies: if you both enjoy golf, suggest that they join you on your next
golf outing. Or you can go for a run together before the start of a conference you’re
both attending.

Engage on events that impact them: when they or their company has been in the
news recently, have closed a major deal, or even when they’ve got a freak weather
storm in their area – all represent opportunities to check-in and make the relationship
stronger.

Close the loop: let them know if something they’ve done (books they told you about,
etc.) was helpful. If they’ve sent you deals, respond back with a thoughtful note about
your decision-making process and thank them for the opportunity.

Set regular time aside to reconnect:

Recurring meetings: as the relationship grows (and especially if the work you do
overlaps materially), it may make sense to put regular time on the calendar – both to
catch up more generally, and to share opportunities each way. These can be calls,
coffee, lunches – whatever makes the most sense for your schedule and logistics.
Getting access to proprietary deal flow and referrals requires staying top of mind.

Opportunistic: You can also use travel to their city, or other emergent events in the
world as moments to authentically engage and build connection.

Community Building

Relationships aren’t just one-to-one, or one-to-many (e.g., content) – some of the most pow-
erful connections we have are in a group context (many-to-many). By bringing people
together around shared interests and passions, you help people form valuable bonds and
share resources to accelerate each other’s progress. You create a virtuous cycle where you all
become smarter and better, together.

In addition, you may be introduced to new connections, companies, and themes that help
you in your quest to find your next great investment or build your deal flow funnel.

The Ultimate Guide to Generating Strong Inbound Private Equity Deal Flow 7
Hosting Events

One way to increase the value each community member gets from your interactions is iden-
tifying a commonality or interest they all share, and structuring the guest list and agenda
around those topics. Similar to company building, the list of spaces and niches can spark your
thinking:

Industry: Depending on your areas of focus (or where your geography has density), you
can organize events of industry practitioners and enthusiasts to discuss current events
and trends, and share tactics.

Good examples: Chicagoland Food & Beverage Network (Food & Beverage),
J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference (Healthcare)

Challenge: One commonality of building and running a company is that there are always
problems – and while not all situations are the same, there are often common pain points
and transferable lessons. Many companies struggle with recruiting great talent fast
enough, scaling operationally, building communities (meta, I know), and many other
issues. By building communities to discuss these topics, you don’t have to have the
answers – just access to people that can bring insight.
Good examples: Atlas Holdings’ Atlas Leadership Academy

Function: Similarly, bringing together people in specific functions you find interesting to
discuss common challenges, tools, and case studies of success can be another powerful
way to create community.

Trend: As new technology and cultural waves emerge (e.g., VR / AR, AI, remote work), the
ripple effects have huge implications for how we work and live. Your events can help
people better understand these implications across multiple dimensions (industries, func-
tions, roles, etc.).

Good examples: Industrial Exchange (Industrial Technology)

Geography: Being in close physical proximity is enough to generate value. Each geography
comes with a unique set of challenges, advantages, and cultural perspectives worth explor-
ing.

Good examples: Chicago Real Estate Private Equity Network

The Ultimate Guide to Generating Strong Inbound Private Equity Deal Flow 8
Digital Community Building

While events require getting people together at the same time, you can also build communi-
ty asynchronously by using digital tools to spark and maintain connectivity.
Some examples:

Online chat/discussion groups: similar to themed events, getting people together to

discuss topics of mutual interest and share generates value for everyone.

Good resource: Slack

Email distribution lists: Not everyone wants to join a new platform – so an easy place to
default to for conversation is the email inbox. Setting up a common distribution list reduc-
es the friction to sharing and conversation amongst your group!

Good resource: Google Groups

Portals/forums: You can also invest in building out a more robust and customized set of
functionality and resources for your community. These can be as lightweight as a Google
Drive folder or an Airtable sheet with links, or a custom-built solution that integrates all
the core tools you’d like to have.
Good examples: Techstars Connect

Physical Space Creation

Most of the methods of community building so far create structured formats to engage.
However, a tradeoff that comes with structure is less serendipity. The random hallway conver-
sations that often move relationships to a deeper level are hard to manufacture. One way to
enable more moments like these to emerge is through carving out a physical space for more
impromptu interactions. Some VC or PE firms enable their portfolio companies, common
co-investors, and friends of the firm to work out of their offices, and have extra space that
they maintain for this purpose. While non-traditional, these can be great sources of deal flow
over time.

Gifts

Free swag is a classic way to denote a friend of a firm (portfolio founder, advisor, close collab-
orator). In addition to the natural, relationship-building goodwill that a gift generates, each
use is a durable reminder of you – helping you stay top of mind in an increasingly hectic
world.

One of the most common (and most parodied) is a vest or jacket (extra points for Patagonia)
with the firm’s logo – but there are tons of other apparel (socks, shirts, sneakers, backpacks)
and non-apparel (pens, mugs, playing cards) options out there. When executed well, your
swag can become a status symbol of its own!
Good resources: A swag provider’s list of popular items

The Ultimate Guide to Generating Strong Inbound Private Equity Deal Flow 9
Step 3:
Grow Your
Network

CONTENT
Guest Posting

In almost every domain, there are publishers who are seen as trusted sources of news or
insight. These usually come with two important kinds of currency: an audience, and credibili-
ty. Many are often interested in publishing the work of others, so long as there is a unique
perspective you can bring to bear. This is true of both digital media businesses (whose busi-
ness relies on them being prolific), as well as bloggers who write to share what they’re learn-
ing (or often to clarify their own perspective).

Private Equity focused publications: Pitchbook, Private Equity International (and their
sub-brands like Buyouts Insider), The Deal

Writing Email Newsletters

Email newsletters continue to be popular ways to build mindshare – when your audience is
heavily engaged with their inboxes, meeting them where they are is a strong recipe for
engagement. This is particularly true with the rise of newsletter + audience management
products. These typically have one or more of the following:

Third-party curation: helping people sort through the high volume of content/products
generated on a daily basis to surface the pieces worth their time to consume (ideally with
commentary around why it’s worth the reader’s time or money).

News + round-up distribution: these are probably the most common, and include
announcements of major news (investments, new funds, new team members). For funds
that are active in other content formats, this can also include a round-up of prior work
created.

Content + course distribution: these are new pieces developed specifically for newsletter
distribution, or courses that help readers level up in a specific area of focus.

Good example: LLR’s learning hub (and newsletter)

The Ultimate Guide to Generating Strong Inbound Private Equity Deal Flow 10
Maintaining a Blog

Though it’s rare for a private equity investor to maintain a blog of their own, many funds have
an area for content they’ve generated and market publicly. In addition to serving as a more
permanent home for content your team has created/been a part of, blogs have the ability to
range from quick, two-paragraph perspectives on what you’re seeing in the market (or
answering common questions) to in-depth research pieces that demonstrate your under-
standing of a space.

You can host this on a site of your own, or on a publishing platform (e.g., Medium). Quickly
running through the advantages of each:

Hosting your blog on your own:

Control of experience: because you’re not constrained by the design aesthetic or

philosophy of the platform provider, you can customize your reader’s experience to
best fit your goals.

Ownership: your subscriber base is yours – which allows you to more easily utilize it for
other (non-blog related) endeavors, and retain it if you decide to switch platforms.

SEO: generally less of a focus for an individual investor or fund, but there are material
SEO benefits from publishing on your own domain and monitoring your traffic met-
rics.

Publishing through Medium or similar:

No set-up required: with a few clicks, you can start writing – limiting the time and
energy that often comes with having a lot of control.

Built-in distribution: enabling your ideas to be read by a broader audience and maxi-
mize exposure

To get the best of both worlds, you’ll often see people publish content on their own web pres-
ence, and then re-publish on Medium.

Good examples: Vista Equity Partners’s insights hub

The Ultimate Guide to Generating Strong Inbound Private Equity Deal Flow 11
Podcasting

Podcasts are exploding as a content consumption format for both educational and entertain-
ment purposes. With that explosion comes an opportunity to build relationships and attract
people interested in your views – which increases your surface area for interesting deals. The
two most common approaches we’ve seen:

Getting on podcasts as a guest: one approach is to serve as a guest on an existing pod-

cast. Similar to guest posting, so long as you have a unique perspective to bring to bear,
this allows you to get exposure to a pre-existing audience and start building a relationship.

Relevant podcasts: Private Equity Funcast, Middle Market Growth Conversations,

BDO Private Equity Perspectives Podcast

Making your own: you can also choose to build out a podcast presence of your own! Some
common formats:

Interviews/case studies: finding domain experts, or CEOs / operators with unique

stories to tell, and answering good questions to help the lessons/insights from their
experience come to light.

Roundtables: discussing news, trends, or a specific area of focus by pulling together a

set of experts in your network who understand the issues at hand deeply.

Q&A: soliciting and answering questions from management teams, on the belief that
those answers will be relevant for a broader audience.

Knowledge sharing: especially relevant when you’ve got domain experience of your
own to share (e.g., the top 5 lessons learned to navigate the next economic downturn).

Video
These could be recorded videos from events or webinars you’ve put together (see the
events section for more on those) or specifically developed content. The formats tend to
be quite similar to ones in the podcast section:

Interviews/case studies
Roundtables
Q&A
Knowledge sharing

Good example: Vista Equity Partners displaying their commitment to executive team
support

The Ultimate Guide to Generating Strong Inbound Private Equity Deal Flow 12
SOCIAL MEDIA
While social is also a distribution channel for content, these mediums also represent an
opportunity to learn, share, and build – relationships, brands, communities – which can also
generate deal flow.

LinkedIn
There are subsets of the private market ecosystem that use LinkedIn as a place to share what
they’re learning, resources they find valuable, or catalyze conversations amongst their con-
nections. If your LinkedIn network is curated enough, it can also be used to stay on top of
some of the events happening in your network – including job changes, deal flow, or posts
they’ve published.

In addition to your existing network on LinkedIn, there are a number of professional associa-
tions and groups on LinkedIn that you can join – amplifying the number of conversations you
can participate in and providing a source of relevant people you can include in your network.

While the noisiness of LinkedIn can be tricky to navigate, it certainly can be a solid relation-
ship-building tool when used well.

While the noisiness of LinkedIn can be tricky to navigate, it certainly can be a solid relation-
ship-building tool when used well.

Good example: Jordan Sellick (DebtMaven)

Facebook
Relationships blend across personal and professional lines more than ever in today’s world –
and so it’s quite common to have predominantly professional connections now as Facebook
friends. While not all of your professional relationships will be open to connecting here (and
you might not be excited about the prospect), you’ll often see a different, more personal side
of your connections on Facebook than you would in other areas.

Similar to LinkedIn, there are also a number of high-quality Facebook groups with industry
practitioners that you can join. This is especially true of specific verticals you’re focusing on –
with Facebook’s scale, there’s vanishingly few professions or interests that don’t have groups
with thousands of members. Plugging into these groups gives you a direct pulse of the core
concerns impacting their day-to-day work, and allows you to hear about companies you
should be tracking for deal flow purposes.

The Ultimate Guide to Generating Strong Inbound Private Equity Deal Flow 13
Twitter

Twitter isn’t as popular in private equity but can be a goldmine of relevant information about
key events happening in your areas of focus. For any niche, there’s an active audience on
Twitter engaging around the relevant topics of the day.

One of Twitter’s defining features is the speed of information transmission – which allows for
your commentary and influence to spread quickly. In fact, there have been a number of inves-
tors that have built strong relationships and audiences essentially out of nowhere, due to
their mastery of the medium.

Good example: Joe Burkhart (Saratoga Investment Corp), Bronwyn Bailey (First
Republic)

ATTENDING EVENTS
Having a presence at and piggybacking off of pre-existing events also allows you to build
relationships with relevant stakeholders. Similar to the above – depending on the industry
you’re in and your areas of focus, there’s likely a host of events that already exist that you can
participate in (e.g., ACG events, SaaStr for enterprise software companies, Expo West for food
and beverage companies). There are also general meetups where other investors congregate
that also serve as great opportunities to reconnect with community members.

Outside of just attending the event, below are some other common ways of generating more
relationship-building opportunities for yourself (and thereby more deal flow):

Presenting/speaking: getting on stage and providing your views on a market, sharing

knowledge and resources, or participating on a panel are all opportunities to help others
and kickstart a relationship with your fellow speakers and audience members.

Sponsorships: through in-kind or monetary support of an event, you are rewarded with
different opportunities to get yourself and your firm in front of others – including premi-
um brand placement, speaking opportunities, and private events.

Organizing side events: Putting together curated dinners, outings, or other gatherings
allows you to build a tighter bond with specific people you want to deepen your relation-
ships with.

The Ultimate Guide to Generating Strong Inbound Private Equity Deal Flow 14
Conclusion
Few firms would disagree with the premise that your success is largely driven by the volume
and quality of the opportunities your team is able to source. After all, you miss 100% of the
shots you don’t take (or never get the chance to shoot in the first place).

Though that perspective is true, that statement is focused on outcomes (which you can’t
control) vs. being focused on drivers you can control. A more useful statement: your success is
largely driven by the strength and quality of your relationship network. We hope this guide
inspires you to take the steps to maximize it to its fullest potential.

And if you’re looking for software to help you maximize that network, take a look at our
Private Equity CRM.

To Learn How 4Degrees Can Help

Your Firm Drive Dealflow And
Leverage The Power Of Your
Network, Click On The Button Below.

The Ultimate Guide to Generating Strong Inbound Private Equity Deal Flow 15