Jay Ferguson

Jay - Credit Suisse NYC to growth equity here, saw your work at Vicente. Built deal sourcing systems after deploying €30m tickets in Europe. Your B2B software focus lines up with something I've been thinking about re: how associates spend their time.

Noticed Vicente focuses on B2B software - curious if you've thought about the database problem. PitchBook shows last year's revenue. Doesn't show next year's churn risk. What actually matters for evaluating these businesses: pricing models, customer benefit claims, switching costs, implementation timelines, compliance depth. That's what tells you what's *happening*, not what happened. Built something that reads websites like a senior associate evaluates them. Just 1000x faster.

Jay, Saw you're leading Vicente out in LA - impressive focus on B2B software and professional services. Though I'm originally from Zimbabwe and cut my teeth at Credit Suisse in NYC (not the west coast), been following the growth equity space closely. 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 European companies, but recently I've been building custom deal sourcing systems for growth investors. Working with Axiom Equity in the UK (they do £60m+ tickets) and Noble Rock Software here in the US -> both focused on finding b2b saas companies with strong unit economics & founder-led teams ready to scale. Figured I'd reach out because Vicente came up as a strong fit based on your $10-50M revenue sweet spot and focus on providing strategic guidance vs just capital. It's not fancy, but it's powerful because we build it custom to you - handles everything from finding companies matching your thesis to scoring them, getting owner/ceo contacts, doing personalized outreach & booking meetings, then pushing everything to your crm. Worth a quick call to see if it could help source more of those growth-stage B2B companies you're after? Best, Russ searchloop.ai www.linkedin.com/in/russellt23

Jay, Most PE associates spend 80% of their time on work that can be 95% automated. The workflow looks like: Export companies from database → Open websites → Copy info to spreadsheet → Score opportunities → Hunt for owner contacts → Draft personalized outreach → Track everything in Excel. That's a $200K-$300K employee doing $25/hour data entry work. For a growth equity shop targeting $10-50M revenue B2B companies, the math gets uncomfortable fast. Your associates should be evaluating deals and building relationships with founders, not hunting for email addresses. The analysis doesn't change. It just happens 25x faster when you automate the mechanical parts. Worth exploring what this looks like for Vicente's sourcing? Russ searchloop.ai

Jay, PitchBook is great for finding companies. Terrible at evaluating them. You get: funding rounds, employee count, basic financials. All backward-looking. For a B2B software investment at Vicente's stage, what actually matters: - Pricing models (usage-based vs. seat-based tells you expansion potential) - Customer benefit claims (ROI promises indicate deal size and sales cycle) - Switching costs (integration depth = retention) - Implementation timelines (time-to-value = churn risk) - Compliance certifications (SOC2, HIPAA = enterprise readiness) One dataset tells you what happened. The other tells you what's happening. We built automation that extracts this from company websites - reads them like a senior associate would, just at machine speed. Real insights around mission-critical factors, not just data points. For your growth-stage B2B thesis, this is the difference between surface-level screening and actual evaluation. Interested in seeing how it works? Russ

Jay, Here's what I keep seeing: Growth equity firms hire smart associates. Train them on deal evaluation. Give them pattern recognition for quality businesses. Then ask them to spend most of their week doing data entry. The structural problem: Manual sourcing scales linearly with headcount. You want to see 200 companies to make 3 investments. That's your associate opening 200 websites, copying information into spreadsheets, hunting for contact details, drafting outreach. Meanwhile, the companies that best fit Vicente's thesis - founder-led, strong unit economics, ready for strategic guidance - are being evaluated at the same pace as everything else. The opportunity cost is brutal. Your associates could be having conversations with founders, pressure-testing business models, building conviction on deals. Instead they're hunting for email addresses. We solve this with automation that handles the mechanical work - finding companies, extracting the signals that matter, scoring fit, getting contacts, drafting outreach. Human-in-the-loop for the judgment calls, but 95% of the grunt work eliminated. Worth a conversation? Russ

Jay, Might not be the right time, but we solve one problem: turning your associates from data entry operators into deal evaluators. If that resonates, let's talk. Russ