Robert Hilmer

Hey Robert — similar background in growth equity and PE. Been thinking a lot about proprietary origination in private tech lately. Would be good to connect.

Hey Robert, see we share a similar PE path, though I was in London doing growth equity not building a global platform like Goanna. most funds I talk to have a database — PitchBook or Grata — maybe a CRM, and then the origination setup is mostly Excel and email from there. but proprietary deal flow still feels thin. thesis, network, and intelligence never sync into one system — so origination resets every cycle instead of compounding. do you disagree? — Russ

Hey Robert, see we share a similar PE path, though I was in London doing growth equity not building a global platform like Goanna. most funds I talk to have a database — PitchBook or Grata — maybe a CRM, and then the origination setup is mostly Excel and email from there. but proprietary deal flow still feels thin. thesis, network, and intelligence never sync into one system — so origination resets every cycle instead of compounding. do you disagree? — Russ

hey Robert — this kept rattling around. when I was doing growth equity we had every subscription going — PitchBook, CRM, enrichment tools, the lot — and I still spent half my time manually pulling origination together across all of it. always wondered if that was just us being disorganised or if it's genuinely universal. imagine Goanna has a way more dialled setup — but figured I'd ask. — Russ

hey Robert — appreciate the connect either way. spend most of my time wiring origination systems for private tech funds — if that ever becomes a thing worth talking about, I'm around. — Russ

Hey Robert, similar background — though I was doing European growth equity not building a global private tech and secondaries platform like Goanna. the typical origination setup I see is a data subscription, a CRM that's half-populated, and a lot of Excel and Outlook doing the heavy lifting. yet the off-market pipeline stays weirdly thin. the intelligence is all there but it's scattered across tools and inboxes — so nothing compounds into a real origination edge. do you disagree? Russell searchloop.ai linkedin.com/in/russellt23

Hey Robert, been talking to a few private tech funds this week and a pattern keeps showing up. most funds have targets in the CRM but no one's quite sure what thesis they came in under, whether someone's already reached out, or if they're worth retrying. no system of record tying it together — everyone's working from a slightly different picture of the pipeline. curious whether Goanna has cracked that or if it's the same pattern. Russell searchloop.ai linkedin.com/in/russellt23

hey Robert — one more thought on this. at my old fund we had a solid stack and smart people, and origination still felt like it restarted from scratch every cycle. took me a while to realise it wasn't a people problem — the tools just didn't talk to each other. always wondered if other private tech funds hit the same thing or if we were just doing it wrong. Russell searchloop.ai linkedin.com/in/russellt23

hey Robert — one thing I keep coming back to from my time doing growth equity — the funds with real proprietary pipelines aren't just seeing more deals. they're seeing them earlier. that changes everything downstream — pricing, competition, conviction. curious if you've been thinking about this at Goanna. Russell searchloop.ai linkedin.com/in/russellt23

hey Robert — appreciate you reading these either way. I'm deep in origination infrastructure for PE funds all day — if you ever want to swap notes on what's working, I'm easy to find. Russell searchloop.ai linkedin.com/in/russellt23