LeGrand Lewis

Hey LeGrand — similar PE background (IB → growth equity on my end). been thinking a lot about proprietary origination in specialty healthcare lately. would be good to connect.

Hey LeGrand, similar PE background — though I came through banking at CS & Greenhill in London rather than Bain consulting and Sorenson like you. origination was always the same story for me — clear thesis, decent relationships, but no proprietary system of record. the people, tools and ideas were never really connected. every deal virtually sourced from scratch, nothing compounding over time. curious if that's still how most funds operate or if I'm behind the times? — Russ

Hey LeGrand, looks like we share a similar PE background, though I was in London doing growth equity deals at Treis not in Salt Lake City building a healthcare-focused platform like you. the pattern I keep seeing with most funds is weirdly consistent — strong thesis, solid network, but no proprietary system of record. the people, tools and ideas are never really connected. every deal virtually sourced from scratch, nothing compounds on itself. curious if that resonates or if you've built something different at Levitate Ridge? — Russ

hey LeGrand — no worries if the timing's off. most funds I talk to have tried some version of building origination in-house — analyst pulling from Pitchbook or Grata, maybe using ChatGPT to help qualify, dumping it into a spreadsheet. each piece kind of works, but there's no system of record tying it together. the people, tools and ideas are all disconnected, so there's tonnes of wasted energy and everything ends up out of sync. been helping a few funds like Mentmore work through that. curious if you've run into the same thing at Levitate Ridge? — Russ

totally get it if origination infrastructure isn't top of mind right now — most funds have 10 things ahead of it on the priority list. the funds I've seen crack it early just tend to compound deal flow in a way that's hard to replicate later. if it ever moves up the list, I'm easy to find. — Russ

LeGrand — Noticed we both did the consulting-to-PE pivot — you via Bain, me via banking at Greenhill in London — before building our own firms. Also saw the Cancer Care Specialists deal in April — congrats on that one. I was deploying €10-30M growth tickets in Europe and spending more time hunting deals than evaluating them — so I built SearchLoop to solve it. Backer Group in the UK uses it to source service businesses for acquisition — define target criteria across a sector → score and rank companies on fit → reach owners directly and book meetings. The whole system is custom-built and plugs into their CRM, email, and calendar. With Levitate Ridge focused on lower middle-market healthcare and business services, there's a version of this that maps well to your thesis — particularly on the services side where the long tail of targets makes manual sourcing painful. We've already built out pipelines in adjacent spaces — worth a quick call to walk through what's in them? Russ searchloop.ai linkedin.com/in/russellt23