(Disclosure: I'm the founder of a deal collaboration platform, and I'm sharing my background and what we built (not here to spam).
Before starting this company, I was Head of M&A at a PE-backed portfolio company, where I led a tech tuck-in acquisition strategy. We did multiple deals a year, and the mandate was to move fast and keep transaction expenses to a minimum.
Three things kept grinding on me, deal after deal:
Legal bills that made no sense for template-driven work. For tuck-ins, a large portion of your agreements is reused. The same NDA, the same LOIs, the same MIPA/APAs. But outside counsel was still billing hours just to track down the right version of a doc, reconcile redlines, and manage email threads. After reviewing my legal invoice, I realized the inherent friction in the deal process was costing thousands of unnecessary transaction expenses.
Diligence trapped in email attachments. Our entire process lived in inboxes. No master track, or clear ownership. Visibility into what was open vs. closed was often vague and not updated. If someone was out or a thread got buried, you found out at the worst possible time.
The security exposure nobody talked about. On any given deal, you're sending sensitive documents to 10 to 15 people across your deal team, advisors, and counsel. Every attachment forwarded outside that thread is a document you've lost control of. In M&A, you talk about confidentiality constantly and then run the whole process over Outlook.
I left in January 2024 and spent two years building a deal execution platform designed around how M&A actually works. Deal document collaboration, diligence tracking, and a secure data room are all connected. This isn't a glorified Dropbox or white-labeled CRM. We built the platform specifically for the moment when you're mid-process on a live deal and need everything to keep the momentum going.
We launched with 15 cornerstone customers across PE, corporate development, and investment banking. The results were surprising. Deal teams shaved up to 3 weeks off diligence timelines. Legal expenses decreased by as much as $20k on a single deal. If you want to learn more, DM me.
I'm not here to pitch, but am genuinely curious what pain points others are still running into on the execution side. The sourcing and origination tooling in PE has gotten pretty mature. The execution layer still feels like it's 10 years behind.