Private Equity should embrace Social Media

For those of you not able to make it to the 12th Annual Canadian Private Equity Markets Summit today in Toronto, here’s a sneak peak at the presentation I’m giving as part of the panel discussing the “current state of deal flow”. Joining me are Jim McNair, Senior Managing Director of Corinthian Capital Group (Chicago), Carlo von Schroeter, Managing Partner of Westview Capital Partners (Boston), and Mark Borkowski, President of Mercantile M&A Corp. (Toronto).

My message will be a bit “out there” for the traditional Private Equity shops, but I’m going to suggest that as much as going to conferences across the continent every week is a good way to develop proprietary deal flow, they should also think about embracing the “good” in social media: corporate blogs and Twitter being two examples.

Here’s the gist:

Our Firm Believes in Disciplined Targeting:– High growth companies that want to delay the dilution of equity — typically with venture capital or corporate sponsor.
– Attractive firms that can’t access sufficient bank debt due to the fact their key asset is IP.

There’s the old-fashioned way to find deals:– Outbound calling works – one person can touch 1k/firms a year;
– Conference every week somewhere in North America;
– Nothing wrong with sponsoring an event;

“Go where the fish are” – and that’s not behind your desk;

Embrace “social media”:
– Our corporate team blog started in 2006:
– 6 million “hits” a year;
– 117,000 unique visitors from 146 countries;
– It takes work. People seek information, opinions , real news.
– Visitors cover the waterfront: LPs, media, industry players, “lurkers”. And it’s passive.
– Ranked #4 “Top Finance Blog” in 2009 by readers of Canada’s National Newspaper The Globe and Mail newspaper.
– Quoted in Barron’s Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, Reuters, BusinessWeek, Canadian Business Magazine, BNN, Fox Television….
– Twitter is also an accepted and professional way to communicate.

Here’s the link to my short presentation.

MRM