Andrew Feller

Hey Andrew — similar path (IB → PE). been thinking a lot about proprietary origination in growth equity lately. would be good to connect.

Hey Andrew, looks like we share a similar IB → PE path, though I was in London at Greenhill not Blackstone/Salomon 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 Andrew, looks like we came up through a similar IB → PE path, though I was in London doing growth deals at Greenhill and Treis not at Blackstone and Metalmark in New York 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, so every deal is virtually sourced from scratch. nothing compounds on itself. curious if that resonates or if you've built something different at Aretex? — Russ

hey Andrew — 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 everything ends up out of sync. been helping a few funds like Axiom Equity work through that. curious if you've run into the same thing at Aretex? — 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

Andrew — We've been building custom deal sourcing systems for growth equity funds deploying $25M+ tickets, which I understand is roughly Aretex's profile. also, incidentally, we share a similar-ish path — I spent time at Greenhill and Credit Suisse before moving to the investor side at a growth equity fund in London (Treis, 300M euro fund, €10-30M tickets). figured it made sense to reach out. Of our active clients, a few are relevant to what you're doing: Axiom Equity in the UK (£300M+ fund, B2B SaaS), Noble Rock Software, and Wingman Growth Partners. We built each of them bespoke origination systems that map markets against their thesis, score targets on the criteria that actually matter to them, source founder/owner contacts, and then run personalized multi-touch outreach across email and LinkedIn — all connected live to their CRM so nothing falls through the cracks. the partners at Axiom, for example, get draft emails to founders dropped into their inbox every morning. origination just runs in the background while they focus on deals and portfolio. it's also the kind of thing LPs tend to like seeing — a proprietary ai-driven sourcing strategy baked into the fund's infrastructure. Given we've already built out this kind of system for funds with a similar profile to Aretex, I wondered if you wanted to take a look under the hood? fairly free this week and next, just let me know a time that suits. very best, Russell searchloop.ai linkedin.com/in/russellt23