Steven Hamerslag

Steven - fellow banking alum here (CS tech M&A). Been thinking about the structural inefficiencies in how growth funds source deals. Would value connecting given TVC's operator-led approach.

Steven - quick thought: PitchBook shows you last year's revenue. But what you actually need to know is next year's churn risk. Databases are great at tracking what happened. Terrible at showing what's happening. That gap is where the real opportunities hide. Happy to share how we're thinking about this if it's relevant to how you source.

Steven, Saw you're UC Berkeley alum from back in the day - I was at Williams myself, though spent time at Credit Suisse in NYC working tech M&A like you've been doing with TVC. I'm sure you get emails like this all the time, but hopefully this one is a little different. At least because it is not ai. In a previous life I was deploying €30m growth tickets into promising European software companies, but recently been building custom deal sourcing systems for growth investors. Working with firms like Axiom Equity UK (£60m+ tickets) and Noble Rock Software (18+ saas port cos) -> they've been using it to systematically map software niches & get warm intros to founders in their sweet spot. Figured I'd reach out because TVC came up as a perfect fit given your operator-led approach and focus on that $2.5-20M revenue range where founders are considering growth capital or recap options. It's not fancy, but it's powerful because we build it custom to you. Handles everything from finding companies matching your thesis, scoring mission-criticality & profitability trajectory, to booking meetings with ceos and early investors, all pushed to your crm. Worth a quick call to see if it could help free up more time for portfolio work? Very best, Russ searchloop.ai www.linkedin.com/in/russellt23

Steven, Most PE associates spend 80% of their time on work that can be 95% automated. The workflow: Export companies → Open websites → Copy info → Score → Hunt for contacts → Draft outreach → Track in Excel. That's a $200K-$300K employee doing $25/hour data entry work. At your fund size, with that $2.5-20M revenue sweet spot, you probably can't afford to have multiple associates on the sourcing team. Which means your senior people are the ones opening 100 websites to find 3 worth calling. Associates should be evaluating deals and talking to founders, not hunting for email addresses. The analysis quality stays the same - it just happens 25x faster when you automate the mechanical parts. Worth discussing what this could look like for TVC? Russ

Steven, PitchBook tracks funding rounds, employee count, basic financials. What actually determines if a software company in your revenue range is a good investment: Pricing models. Customer benefit claims. Switching costs. Implementation timelines. Compliance depth. One tells you what happened. The other tells you what's happening. For TVC's thesis - that operator-led approach to companies considering growth capital or recaps - you need to understand mission-criticality, not just growth rate. Expensive databases are great for finding companies. Terrible at evaluating them. We built automation that reads websites like a senior associate reads them, just 1000x faster. Actual insights around switching costs, ROI claims, implementation complexity - the stuff that predicts retention and pricing power. Let me know if you want to see how it works for your specific focus areas. Russ

Steven, Here's the structural problem: When your team is manually researching companies, they can look at maybe 50-75 per week if they're moving fast. Which means they're looking at the obvious ones. The companies already on everyone's list. The interesting opportunities - companies at $8M revenue that are mission-critical to their customers but haven't raised capital, founders exploring options quietly - those get missed because there's no time to dig. Not because of bad judgment. Because of bad workflow. Your associates are spending 80% of their time on mechanical tasks instead of the evaluation work they're actually good at. We've automated the mechanical parts for a few growth funds now. Same analysis depth, just 25x faster. Means they can actually look at 1000+ companies per month and still do the deep work on mission-criticality, switching costs, all the factors that actually matter. Worth 15 minutes to walk through how this could work for TVC? Russ

Steven, Timing might not be right, but the core problem stays the same: your senior people are doing data entry instead of evaluating deals. If that changes, let's talk. Russ