Steve Wolfe

Hey Steve — similar path (CS → growth equity). been thinking a lot about proprietary origination in vertical SaaS lately. would be good to connect.

Hey Steve, similar IB → growth equity background, though I was at CS & Greenhill in London not Credit Suisse in NYC and then into PE like you. origination was always the same story for me — clear thesis, decent relationships, but no proprietary system of record tying anything together. 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 Steve, looks like we came up through a similar IB → growth equity path, though I was in London doing european growth deals at Greenhill & Treis not in SF backing practitioner-founders 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 Growth Street? — Russ

hey Steve — 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 Noble Rock work through that. curious if you've hit the same wall at Growth Street? — 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

Steve,  Saw your recent posts with Raymond Kim about founder-market fit being key to Growth Street's approach. Something we both clearly believe in - though I learned it the hard way after my first startup failed spectacularly in London. 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 at Treis in London, but recently been building custom deal sourcing systems for funds like yours: Axiom Equity in the UK (£60m+ tickets) and Noble Rock Software here in the US (18+ port cos). They've been focused on finding B2B workflow SaaS & scoring founder backgrounds, market depth, etc. Figured I'd reach out because Growth Street's focus on underserved markets + founder-market fit is exactly what SearchLoop was built for. It's not fancy, but it's powerful because we build it custom to you -> finds companies matching your thesis, gets founder contacts, handles personalized outreach, books meetings, and pushes everything to your crm. Given you're investing in companies like TeamLinkt and Chipply in that sweet spot, could be worth exploring how we help you see more deals like those? Best, Russ searchloop.ai www.linkedin.com/in/russellt23

Steve, Most PE associates spend 80% of their time on work that's basically data entry. The workflow: Export companies → Open websites → Copy info → Score → Hunt for contacts → Draft outreach → Track in Excel. That's a $200K-$300K employee doing $25/hour work. They should be evaluating deals and building relationships with founders, not hunting for email addresses. For a fund at your stage, that inefficiency compounds fast. Your associates have the judgment to spot great founder-market fit in underserved markets - they just can't do it buried in manual sourcing work. Same analysis, just 25x faster when the grunt work is automated. Worth a conversation about how Growth Street sources today? Russ searchloop.ai

Steve, Databases track funding rounds, employee count, basic financials. What actually matters when evaluating companies in underserved markets: customer benefit claims, switching costs, implementation timelines, compliance requirements. PitchBook shows you last year's revenue. It doesn't show you next year's churn risk. For Growth Street's thesis around founder-market fit, you need to understand how deeply founders understand their customer's workflow. That's not in any database - it's on their website, in their product messaging, in how they talk about implementation. We built automation that reads websites like a senior associate evaluates them, just 1000x faster. It's AI with human-in-the-loop to get credible insights on mission-critical factors. One tells you what happened. The other tells you what's happening. Interested in seeing how this works for a company in your pipeline? Russ

Steve, There's a structural problem in PE sourcing. Your best people - the ones who can spot founder-market fit and evaluate underserved markets - spend most of their time doing manual work that could be 95% automated. They're not evaluating deals. They're copying and pasting from websites into spreadsheets. The firms winning on deal flow figured this out. Their associates spend time on judgment calls: Does this founder actually understand their market? Is this workflow truly sticky? Is this market actually underserved or just small? Everyone else is still treating sourcing like it's 2015. Maybe Growth Street has already solved this. But if your team is still doing manual company research and contact hunting, there's a better way. Russ searchloop.ai

Steve, Timing might not be right, but the core problem: your associates doing $25/hour work instead of evaluating deals. If that ever becomes a priority, I'm here. Russ