09 questions / Updated
Outbound deal origination for private equity and private credit funds
Our published origination case study is a private credit fund, not a buyout portco, but the pattern is the same: relationship deal flow existed, and the team still needed a pipeline they could generate and choose from.
Why would a fund with relationship deal flow build outbound origination?
Warm deal flow is real, but it limits choice. A short list puts pressure on every deal, good or bad, because there isn't another one behind it. A pipeline the origination lead generates herself means the fund can turn deals down.
“If I only have three deals in front of me, I have this impulse to do it no matter how good or bad they are. If I have ten deals in the pipeline that I can pick and choose from, that enhances our negotiating power, and I get better quality deals.”
Who should a fund target first for outbound origination?
The first question was not how to blast more email. It was who would actually answer and stay useful over years. Hospital CFOs were a weak cold channel. Investment bankers lived in deal flow, so that became the first lane.
How does Apero turn a conference list into origination targets?
Apero worked with the origination lead on research: conference lists turned into fit, contact paths, LinkedIn context, and mutual connections (Clay and Deepline early on).
A conference list is first name, last name, company, title. The research step answers whether the person is a fit, what their email and LinkedIn are, and who the fund already knows in common.
Should a fund automate origination outreach?
Not by default. Reply rates were high enough that automation would have been the wrong default. The team kept outreach personal until they were confident brand risk was low.
How long should a fund run outbound origination before judging it?
Longer than feels comfortable. Expect the work to feel useless before it feels like proof, and set the checkpoint far enough out that a slow start does not get read as failure.
“You have to be really patient and trust the process. Set some metrics around it. Send a thousand emails and then review, versus sending twenty and calling it a failure after zero replies.”
What results has outbound origination produced for a fund?
After origination got dedicated time, reply rate landed around 35%, with origination volume above $300M attributable to the motion in the published study.
- Outbound reply rate
- 35%
- New industry relationships
- ~150
- Origination volume
- $300M+
Has Apero built origination for other funds?
Yes. Unity Investments is another fund Apero built an origination engine for.
“We were starting from nothing: no list, no sequences, no system. Apero built the whole origination engine from scratch, and we were seeing reply rates around 40 percent. It changed where our deal flow comes from.”
Can the origination method be used beyond deal sourcing?
Yes. The same identify-and-reach-out method has since been used to source a private wealth advisor hire and to evaluate accounting firms.
“It's a playbook you can take wherever you go, at whatever initiative the business wants to move forward with.”
What does an origination build with Apero include?
The TAM and origination motion is a Growth Build: account universe, research workflow, one channel built and measured, plus operator training for the team running it.
Growth Build starts at $15k minimum spend with a $5k monthly ongoing minimum. Ranges are directional. Final scope follows a working session.