Eric Close

Hey Eric — we both ended up in PE from pretty different directions. been thinking a lot about origination in defense / industrial lately. would be good to connect.

Hey Eric, we both ended up in PE though from pretty different paths — I came through IB in London rather than the operator route you took. origination was always the same story for me — clear thesis, decent relationships, but no proprietary system of record tying anything together. 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 Eric, looks like we both landed in the PE world, though from different angles — I came through banking at CS & Greenhill in London into growth equity, not through building and scaling companies hands-on the way you have at Mount Sharp. 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, so every deal is virtually sourced from scratch. nothing compounds on itself. curious if that resonates or if you've built something different at Mount Sharp? — Russ

hey Eric — 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 stay disconnected so there's tonnes of wasted energy. been helping a few funds like Mentmore work through that. curious if you've run into the same thing at Mount Sharp? — 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

Eric — Been reading about your path from electrical engineering through RedZone Robotics to building Mount Sharp as an operational equity firm — the thread of taking over companies and actually running them is pretty clear. Taking RedZone from bankruptcy to global leader in wastewater inspection is one of those stories that doesn't get enough credit. I had a somewhat parallel (if less dramatic) arc — economics and banking at Credit Suisse and Greenhill, then deploying €10-30M growth equity tickets in London. Loved the investing, hated how much time I spent manually hunting down targets. So I built SearchLoop to fix that. Now we build custom deal sourcing systems for firms doing acquisitions. Backer Group in the UK uses it to find service and light manufacturing businesses — map a sector, score targets on operator profile & business quality → then reach out directly to owners and book meetings. Noble Rock Software does something similar on the B2B software side across 18+ portfolio companies. Given Mount Sharp's model — operational equity, actively running the businesses you acquire — I'd imagine the pipeline work of finding the next SBG Defense or Placenta AI is a different kind of grind from evaluating them once you've found them. We build the system custom to your stack: plugs into your CRM, email, calendar. You see exactly what's happening at every step. Worth a quick call to see if it could help with your acquisition sourcing? Russ searchloop.ai linkedin.com/in/russellt23