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I want to thank everyone for coming I know many of you spent a lot of time on airplanes on trains and cars I'm very appreciative of the time that you're gonna spend with us over the next day or two days I just wanna make a quick comment about the deal market we all know it's been a very challenging market high prices high leverage lots of competition yet people are still getting deals done so I'm putting together the content or today and tomorrow we really try to address this name we've really tried to attack about we really tried to address the theme of how people are still getting good deals done in this highly competitive and very seller friendly market I hope everyone takes advantage of the panels that we've set up today and tomorrow we've got great panelists and we've recruited some really top-notch talent a couple of housekeeping items Mayor Rahm will be here at the noon his people tell me he's quite punctual so I would encourage people to begin congregating at 11:30 maybe 11:45 marylee wanted me to mention the CPM forms CPE forms in the back and if you have some time over the next few days to fill out the evaluation forms lastly I just wanted to thank my fellow committee members for the last few months I've asked them to be on phone calls with me every Friday in the afternoon which is probably the last thing they wanted to do and so I know I took time away from their day jobs and probably other areas their life and I'm quite appreciative of the time they allocated to to this committee so with that I'm going to turn it over to tech direction and her panel and thank you very much thank you Justin we are all delighted to be here in front of you today we're delighted to see such a great crowd so thanks thanks for taking part of your schedule today to listen to us as Justin said we all know it's a very seller friendly very competitive environment right now and and I think generating generating deal flow and generating the right kind of deal flow they're not wasting your time on things that are not the right deal flow for your particular shop is is very important I think another reason we're happy for this opportunity to be in front of an audience of a bunch of professionals whose job it is to talk to business owners and connect them with capital when the time is right is our stakeholders some of the most important people in our lives are our investors our limited partners who have taken an increasingly harder look at all of the business development deal generation functions in in the GPS in which they invest because they realize that's a critical part of bringing the right thing in so that you can build upon it and grow so so our those are the folks that we want to please most often is our investors and so we're really thankful for all of the deals that you guys bring to us and we're hoping we're hoping for more so with that we will kick off I have a great panel here as you can see what we thought we would do one of the our topic is generating the right deal flow and one of the things in terms of generating their idea for so you have an opportunity in front of an audience like yourselves you take that opportunity to tell you all what we're looking for and where our real sweet spots are so we're going to go through a set a slide of each of ours showing our the deals that we've done in 2014 and 2015 I think although Richard pointed out that I might have I may have job from here and not included everything so feel free to embellish on your slide Richard to tell you what we're looking for where we're looking to add on and then if there's any other areas of initiative that we have where we don't have a deal done yet but we're actively looking we'll describe that as well so that's how we're gonna kick it off and and why don't you each do a little you know an introduction of maybe the overview of your firm where you located that sort of thing as well so we're gonna step off with Richard Preston guard from higher ed capital great thanks Gretchen um yeah rich press to guard with high road Capital Partners I'm a partner and my function is to focus on our business development or field sourcing some people just refer to me as the deal sourcing guy at high road I've been with higher ed since our inception or you know near our inception I was the first person that the team the founders brought on board in 2007 our mission from then until today is has been the same through to funds we're currently working on our second fund it's been to find pretty much well run businesses that are certain science range and and perform well and that's defined by us as three to ten billion dollars in EBIT dollar generally we do look at things larger up to 15 million and and sometimes things even smaller down to two million four platforms but generally were living in a three to ten million dollar view range and then well run for us is defined well run are special is defined as ten percent or better Eva doll margins we are still an opportunistic fund there's been a trend lately to be more and more specialist in terms of industries but we feel like in our size range a lot of the opportunity in improving businesses that we look to invest in are more or less walking tackling type things improving the CFO function improving systems things that are important to do in nearly any niche industry so we do look for control investments and we look across the u.s. and Canada so on the slide here are two of our platforms that we've done in 2014 and 2015 I think you'll see and other people's slides add-ons also on there I don't that was clear that's the part that I didn't catch so we've been more active than just the two deals and I felt embarrassed when I saw everyone else's slides with all the deals that you'll see in a few minutes but we've done in since 2014 we've done two platforms and for add-ons so six transactions still still probably fewer than the others on the panel but you know we're pretty reactive since 2008 only close the first one we closed 33 acquisitions and we've done four exits they do on the screen that are highlighted Gretchen do what you want us to talk about specific deals right now generally about what those are and if you're seeking at us yeah so you know our modus operandi in any acquisition that we did in platform is generally gonna have an add-on strategy so a blanket statement is when people ask me you know which your platforms are looking for Alan's the answer is pretty much always all of them we you know that's one of the things that we bring to the table a lot of these businesses we've gotten to the point where they've grown nicely they're doing good things in their space but they kind of lack the wherewithal to execute an acquisition they don't know how to go about finding one they don't know net negotiate it and put it together and then integrate it once they they own it so add-ons are always going to be an important part of the story the quick story behind these two deals they're both fun few deals we source you know our opportunities from lots of different places and I think I'll be talking more about that a little later too but general tools just to give a flavor I think is the point of this slide the type of stuff to look at general tools is a consumer focused tools and instrument deal it was you know so around both these businesses actually are quite old you know 90 to 100 year old businesses that were privately held general is you know focus on tool and tools and instruments sold through the large you know Home Depot's and loads of the world as well as specialty channels and York is wallcoverings business that you know we say wallcoverings it is mostly wallpaper but there's other things that go on walls that fall into this category York also very old lots of old equipment a lot of challenges and working through diligence here on inventory and understanding what the equipment base is and how to grow this business but also you know a nice story that actually is the largest platform that we've executed to date so I don't know much more detail I want to go in doing these I think that's good they're gonna look for hand tool companies and walk on their companies for you next we're gonna go with tile okay late yeah good morning guys I'm a vice president at the firm it's called KL H capital headquartered out of Tampa Florida we've got another smaller office up in Charlotte North Carolina or just north of Charlotte some of you guys may know my founders as they were the founders of Florida Capital Partners back in the day factor the mid-80s so in sum were on our seventh fund we've done about a hundred and forty deals since the mid 80s since 2005 we've been managing only you know capital from high net worth individuals half of which carry Kaylee's business cards so I think that's that's one differentiation that we bring is that you know when we walk in and sit down in front of a business owner you know half of that capital is coming from you know around wallets and I think further than that it gives us the flexibility to do big deals small deals deals with customer concentration to vendor concentration I mean we can look at a lot of different quality deals on that scale as you see here loose to billion of EBIT on I think we would draw a line at about a million and 7 but we can be opportunistic so call it 2 million to 10 industry wise we like to focus in distribution business to business services oftentimes a lot of industrial stuff as well as manufacturing and then I think when when you wrap up our firm in kind of who we are and what's our DNA I think it comes down to where a recap shop that's really what we've done over the last thirty something years is recaps management led by outs family succession deals were really really good at kind of bringing that bedside manners to these family-owned businesses which you know none of them are perfect so we understand that getting into the deals that we've done the last couple of years these are five platforms CCM to your left is a new jersey-based cell phone tower maintenance company in the center blue sky is a denver-based restoration contractor and they're focusing on doing remediation and restoration to high-rise condominiums as well as commercial buildings absolutely looking to do add-ons they're the one furthest to your right Pelayo measurement is down in Louisiana they're a distributor and servicer of measurement and metering devices going into the oil field all across the south so will we - we'll look for add-ons there bottom left mid state machine and fab is a Florida based field services business that's doing the plant shut down an outage work going into Powergen mining chemical plants cement plants in some agriculture again absolutely looking to be acquisitive there and then data display is one of our most recent deals but which is headquartered up in Philadelphia actually which is a distributor of customized electronics you think audio-visual and video going into the point-of-purchase display and fixture market so we're not actually making the peop displays this is more almost like think about walking into a Best Buy as you're gonna try on all the different headphones but listen to the same song this is the electronics that mate all of that together behind the scenes so happy - happy to chat about all five of these we're looking to do add-ons and all five of them I'm happy to happen it's that more that's interesting that the one you live when you described last one another one of those companies that we all run into frequently where you go huh I guess somebody does that yeah sometime oh all right Jennifer from Thompson Street yeah good morning I'm Jennifer elin director of deal origination at Thompson Street Capital Partners we are based out of st. Louis Missouri currently investing out of our third fund the size is a 380 million we consider ourselves industry agnostic but that being said there are three primary verticals that we feel have really surfaced throughout our investment history business services healthcare services and highly engineered products we've also done a number of b2b distribution companies from traditional distribution to e-commerce base primarily those they're focused on SMBs I would say we're primarily investing in founder led businesses due to the size of 4 to 15 million ego-t a is sort of our sweet spot as well that being said as many of my other panelists already mentioned we will definitely go south of that as well as we can muscle have to go north as well I would say probably the smallest company we've invested in was about 1.9 million EVGA and we were really excited about the management team as well as there was a number of readily available add on acquisitions that they were already in discussion with and we felt really confident that there were ample synergies with with making those happen I I think our real differentiation at Thompson Street we like to consider anyways our culture the base in the Midwest were extremely transparent throughout the deal origination and transaction process we've had a number of families and founders that we've worked with say that they really appreciated that we really do put all of our cards on the table they felt like we all kind of knew where we were going into this from the beginning where we like to be involved at the board level but whereas so many others at the end of the day we're investing in our management teams so we we've had a pretty good 2014 and 2015 we've been pretty busy sorry yeah we got I saw the part of the message that said the top bro are all add-ons the three boxes that you see the de re and AR are all add-ons for our platform called focus vision which is in the market research space it basically adds technology and software that allows focus groups to be transmitted via video conferencing so the executives at Procter & Gamble don't have to fly to Germany to watch this focus group as it's happening in real time they can log in to focus vision see the focus group as has happened and also communicate with the moderator in real time as well so those three add-ons were we're synergistic and that they they added additional services in the qualitative and quantitative research space to the focus vision platform exam and PGP or both add-ons for our data center called tear point eggs and basically doubled the size of the company was a 40 million Abda size company that we added onto tier point earlier this year the platform's echo set stone panels and infinity as well as Tristar we also had two additional platforms that are not we're not able to disclose at this point and we had three additional add-ons as well that were unable to disclose this point as well echo sat is a Lexington Kentucky based company that helps with security at the point of purchase at Mobil gas stations in primarily tier 2 cities so they're the folks that help make sure your credit card information is not compromised when you put it into the mobile gas station so they're not processing the transaction they're not processing the money they're just making sure it stays secure which was another one for us that we thought huh that's important that seems to be increasingly important in these day stone panels is a composite stone channel that is used primarily in commercial applications this is a building product search that we that we took on I was able to find this company out of Texas Infiniti and receivables management partners are both in the revenue cycle management healthcare space RMP is poor is a collections company we actually acquired that company in 20 teen but it's up there because we had to add ons for it this year and infinity is a full-service RCM company primarily focused on the behavioral health care system and behavioral health care providers bio IDT is a distributor of biological products for the early stage drug discovery markets so these are cell samples tissue samples hepatocyte anything that a researcher who's trying to find treatments for Parkinson's and cancer might need in order to perform their their research we did two add-ons for bio IBT as well finally tristar's in the energy services space they do hydrocarbon cleaning for for oil field and oil field providers excuse me as well as some chemical plants if this clean needs to happen whether the market is up or down as well as in emergency situations we are looking for add-ons for all of these companies all right hope you're all taking good notes what we're all looking for that's why we're up here Randy Summer Street and good morning everybody Randy Bianca I'm a partner of summer street been with summitry for eight years and I need our public outreach and marketing effort at Summer Street one of three partners are one three associates at Summer Street did strictly focused on business development so I'm excited to be here today we're investing our third fund and currently seeking healthy companies it typically arrange them at 3 to 15 million dollars in EBT a three would be the floor would be tough for us to go any lower than three but we can certainly go higher than the 15 that deal for the right opportunities in terms of our focus now we're generous like most of the private equity groups we are focused on healthy companies we do avoid Albertina companies that are highly regulated and require a lot of reimbursement risks and those are deals that come in are not in favor at Summer Street but other than that we are journalists and we appreciate any opportunities that you bring to our attention the are currently across the summer speed funds we have 13 portfolio investments in our platform in 2014 we did three platform investments with or the top three levels that you're looking at we did six add on acquisitions the first one you're looking at is a Las Vegas company called full spectrum laser that's a company in the additive manufacturing space they actually manufacture laser engravers and 3d printers the second company is a couple Caldwell works well works it's in Cleveland Ohio and that's in the relocation Management Services and we support basically our MC feature the relocation management companies are really our focus in bulwark is an international travel any opportunity you see in that space we appreciate your bringing it to our attention and then finally multi sort of technologies that's a active packaging company and basically manufacturers sorbets materials it's by stake that little pad it's on top of the steak or a prescription we have two little caplet that's inside their prescriptions we manufacture those products very nice company that's actually located in Buffalo New York and I added the Curtis Day and Apple dollar waste those were two of the portfolio companies where we did a number of acquisitions last year the Curtis Day is medical waste incineration we obviously it is exactly what it sounds like and then the app evaluates is a collection of disposal company we also do recycling and last year we did a joint venture to do a waste to energy conversion plant so in the Environmental Services spaces in area we particularly like to I guess one thing it makes it a little unique from some things we talked about is we will consider non control investments so not just control and it's something that makes us very unique in fact I can probably tell you that we are probably the only private equity firm that can tell you this we're located in Buffalo New York really hence you do a lot of the travel them today in Geelong thanks Randy I'm gonna rock it through this slide because we're running on that's a shock find business development professionals with microphones in front of them are taking longer than intended that is that's shocking I'm Gretchen Perkins I head up our origination efforts at here on Capitol my colleague Heather Madeline Heather please wave will be calling on those of you who are located west of Chicago in the western half of the United States and we have a three person dedicated business development team looking for businesses with EBIT day from 5 to 20 however we've been much more active in add-ons in 2014 and 2015 we we've done 12 anions this year across the portfolio and I'm just going to hit on three of the platforms that we did and tell you what we're looking for we have we have a couple of dental practice management dental service organization so you all know one dentist maybe two if you take your kids to a pediatric dentist which is different than your dentist so we're looking for dentists to add to our practice management groups we close the business last year called accelerate which is auto auctions we've done one significant add-on for that this year looking for that and then our third platform we did in 2014 was called Albireo energy last year our CEO of that business spoke here at this conference on a panel some some of you may have heard him and we're looking for energy efficiency engineering and building automation businesses so United States and Canada that's what we're looking for all right we're going to have a bit of Q&A here and heads up we're probably not going to get to all questions we talked about because I really want to focus on we've we've put together a list of do's and don'ts for all of you intermediaries me in the audience and we're really excited to tell you what we love when you send us things and things we really wish you would do differently and we've limited ourselves to three pages upset the Q's and don'ts so just the really just the really important things but first of all for Richard and for Kyle could you describe a deal that you generated at some point you know for your firms that that is a good example of how you guys differentiate yourselves amongst the rest of us we all go to market differently we all have different strengths can you can you give the audience a brief overview of a couple of things of a deal that either shows something that's very typical about how you do things or something that you you guys use as your real differentiator for for generating deals well rich you go ahead okay it's talking a little bit about this last night I think the differentiation question is it sometimes difficult we'll all have a little bit different focus you'll have a little bit different ways of doing things but at the end of the day we're after a lot of the same things I think really what happens is you're differentiated by your performance and how you ultimately deliver what you say you're going to deliver for highroad you know we feel I feel fortunate to join the group that I rode is not a place it's a it's a brand and we you know conduct business in what we call a hybrid kind of way we always take the high road it's a little bit corny we say you take the high road in life end up in a better place we think that's really true and you know if the goes down to the people that we've hired and and how we go about approaching the market that said tactically how has been a very methodical disciplined approach to identifying the market and you know peering out where on one person and covering the United States and Canada and something like 4,000 new media area farms up to 4,000 Indian area firms 6 to 7,000 individuals that's a lot of people so you've got to kind of break it down in some way and figure out the right way to approach that at the end of the day the deals we've sourced have come from intermediaries lawyers accounts everybody from day one since we start high road has been considered a potential deal source some people are more prolific deal sources than others so to pick one in highlight that part you know because literally those two deals that that our platforms were sourcing to different types of intermediaries most of our stuff is sourcing in the areas but not all of it one one of those intermediaries belong I call it a really good relationship based in a meaty area and the other one this I think is interesting maybe a little bit differentiating we sourced from Kalyn which normally does much larger deals and and most people in this room would think why would high road be targeting Kalyn you know my background is Investment Banking it came from larger intermediaries and I know that they do small deals from time to time so I've kept relationships with those guys I don't spend a lot of time calling on them but I know but every once in a while they're doing a small deal to strategic to them I kind of want to get it done fast they have a limited number of sources that they know to go to for capital to get those kinds of deals done and Becca's done a few deals you know on that basis one from Callen that was up there and another one from Wallace still stings that I missed that Callen deal I like to rub that one in this value didn't bring that up thank you the favorite ones though are you know relevant relevant to you know the audience you know one of the first bills we did I there was a you know a new media area in the room was a cocktail party for an ECG event it wasn't the AMA that but you know it's kind of standing there by itself and I was more shy type of a person and you know what we do we all do we're all kind of type-a personality you got me talk a guy and it turns out you know the huge successful deal for us my favorite story is you know getting out there and talking to people on a golf course you know actually sources deal their source to deal on the food line in my kids elementary school we didn't do that one but you know you know we could seriously consider it so they come from all over it's hard to come pick one thing my answer to this question is everyone's a deal source you gotta kind of find ways to be as efficient as possible and be disciplined as possible and most importantly deliver on what you say you're gonna deliver on and that ultimately results in a brand that whether it's tied to your company or not the brand is what you do and how you do it and it needs to be consistent and and deliver on what you say you're gonna do so I guess overall I think that's my answer thank you Kyle yeah I think when you when looking at the five deals that we just showed you up on the slides one just so you guys know where they're coming from and I'll mimic what rich said one came from an intermediary who was working on the buy side because the seller wouldn't engage him so he had to pay the fee we have no problems doing that one came from more of a boutique investment bank in the south one came from an accountant one came from another boutique investment bank out of the Midwest and one came from an independent equity sponsor so it's a myriad of different types of sources on to Rich's point we've seen deals from life coaches we've seen deals from accountants attorneys consultants bankers lenders that the whole thing I mean that's kind of a quick question how many of you guys have ever walked into a meeting fully expecting to talk business and you walk out without even mentioning your company's name or anything about business whatsoever it's interesting not as many as I would hope so I have unfortunately or unfortunately I think this is this is kind of a wild story but I flew out to San Diego for inner growth I think a lot of you guys are there are a number of years ago there's a gentleman who lived about an hour north of San Diego I had never met with him we were supposed to get together an inner growth he was busy decided to cancel I popped in a rental car drove to his house sat on his sofa talked about the Kardashians for 90 minutes I'm not at all kidding 90 minutes about the Kardashian family didn't talk about Koh didn't talk about his business brokerage didn't talk about what we wanted to invest in whatsoever clocks do I had to drive back to inner growth he then called about three months later with a deal with about six and a half of EBIT da in New England he's obviously west coast he had mailed them a letter wife had opened up the letter on the right day she could called him he called us we did the deal and it was a over 10x return so looking back on that to Rich's point it's like where do these deals come from I don't know but the point is you got to cast a wide net we track our deal flow so basically any sort of metric would possibly can get our hands on and it's really interesting to know that there's there's very very little correlation at least within our data a very little correlation with the location of the company versus the location of the intermediary and we thought that was really interesting when we mapped out the u.s. to say alright we're in Tampa and Charlotte do we spend a hundred percent of our time in the southeast well our data proves that I may have to go to California to get a deal in my backyard so it's a really interesting market right now but I think the key is to again to the riches point you have to do it you're gonna say you have to be responsive you have to bring good bedside manners to these businesses at least you know because we're doing a lot of small stuff you know two million three million avivit da where the culture is literally everything to these people so I think you have to have the right bedside manners in front of these groups and I think that's that's what wins right I mean all you have is a reputation on this industry alright so I assume you have a bullet plan in your marketing plan over here now refer to as the Kardashian content strategy go to market strategy I like it alright I'm gonna combine a couple of questions Randy and Jennifer in together collectively you have four minutes to cover this just manage expectations so can you describe can you describe to the audience I mean we're we are your primary contact at each of our firms so I'd like you to describe what you mentioned you won a three-person business development team describe you know very briefly the structure of your team and how you know the onboarding of a deal happens at your firm when is the handoff to the execution team if there is a clean handoff just kind of describe that and you know how overall how do you strategically manage your outreach to this type of audience I am i I could say anything for minutes I'm from Buffalo now by originally from New Jersey so I can speak quickly so I I'm one of three folks one more either partners in business development Gary Hall many of you might know it also my mentor he's in that typically the way it works within Summer Street and I think the easiest way to position it is to kind of understand what a deal team typically looks like at the end post transaction so resources that we engage you typically be business development will have a deal to that execution person will have an operating partner and will have a junior associate it's on a deal the way we introduce research is resources it's typically kind of a stage gate so deals that come into the firm typically we'll start with your your business developing contacts who will receive the t's or in the information you forward will review that if it looks like a compelling opportunity at that point will execute the the confidentiality agreement and then will request additional information so that sin comes in at Summer Street at that point we're engaging a deal execution person based on resources and fit for the opportunity so we'll work the DD person will work with our deal executive partner and reviewing the sin if if we like the opportunity but in the presenting investment team will engage a junior resource typically an audit an analyst or associate and then they'll get involved and write in the two pager and will present it so at that point we have the deal execution person engage you have an analyst engage and then once we're moving forward in the process and going to go to a company meeting the business development person will kind of exit that process kind of will gracefully backed out and will introduce an operating partner who will be typically it's a senior executive who's see a former CEO of another business it kind of gets involved in the company meeting and then once we move through the LOI and the close you know that same team stays in place and will continue to work with the portfolio company the business development person is reengaged again at the end of the process to work with the portfolio company for any strategic needs that they may have that it relates to our acquisitions etc so one of the things that's important is we all work together at Summer Street business development deal flow is a team effort you don't need to copy everybody in their firm typically you want to include they were deal exact it in in the business development that's fine and then will engage the right persons and will bring it forward thanks Jennifer sure our process is very similar to the one that Randi just described for Somerset at Thompson Street so I work with three other individuals on the deal origination team along in terms of our sourcing efforts our marketing efforts we try to do a pretty broad spectrum of direct sales like outreach to intermediaries and and and others as well as some broad marketing activities as well we're a little unique in that the way that my colleague Jack and I have split up our outreach efforts is I handle primarily more broad-based marketing activities a lot of conference attendance I also do some level of good circle limited a proprietary deal flow although we do really like it when intermediaries get involved even on our proprietary deals because as you guys all know that really helps get the transaction actually done but we try to reach out to to business owners directly on occasion to give us the chance to have a seat at the table when they do decide to to go to market we have we are actually doing ready to increase our team and add an associate / analyst to the origination team as well to help us on a number of those efforts we like to work with executive partners and and try to have executive partners involved in a number of the industries that we've identified that we want to try to source a deal in we also like working often with buy-side intermediaries who are actively looking in a particular space in terms of when the handoff occur so my colleague Jack is a special-operations former Army Ranger so as it turns out as you can cool our process is pretty militaristic yeah what's wrong sizing occasionally right okay the color coded chart that we review every Monday morning and in addition to when we have our standard deal origination meeting and we like to stay as involved as possible up until similar to so much that up until the point that we are at a management visit obviously if there's if it's a limited process deal or proprietary deal and the relationship originated with me I will stay involved longer in the process even to the point of close and of course then post close the origination team also gets involved again is Randy said when when we closed the deal we work actively with the management teams to source add-ons Thanks I think you know the overall message is we're the front line we're traveling all the time and and so when the handoff occurs to the execution team that means we've decided that we've vetted it enough with you all to to deem it worthy of having our guys back in the office spend some real time on it and if we've if we made that decision then they're gonna jump on it right and and they're gonna be your enthusiastic supporters of the deal it's not that we've you know we don't love you anymore we don't talk to anymore it's just time for us to go to the next city and you know generate the next batch of deals to bring in so that's just wanted to give you a sense of how that works rich and kaya if you can do this in two minutes or less big topic we wanted to cover because these are somewhat the bane of our existence but here today is online deal portals can you talk about your approach and how you officially work with those stick stay away from do's and don'ts because we have a few do's and don'ts regarding Saturday if you want to go first this one car yeah so deal porters they're an interesting thing I do think that they're here to stay we do use them I think we you know of a three-man origination team one of us is dedicated not full-time but covers the deal portals 100% make an interesting comment I think when we look at you know where the deals are coming from and what's the quality of the deal flow again we use Salesforce for our CRM we track everything we've noted that most say the quality is different from the online deal portals but I don't know that we've ever chased anything that's coming from the online deal portal so I don't know if there's any correlation there but our data would say that you know of all the deals that we're getting outside of these things we haven't yet chased one so we use them as almost like an insurance policy just to make sure that we're seeing everything that we should be but I think it you know so far it seems to be slightly different quality rich yeah echo pretty much every word we look at it as a safety net basically to make sure they're you know might be a deal out there that we didn't say in the media area base that we have in our outreach program may not hit somebody and we made that mutt up and thought of the biggest benefit of it is I think we've we've expanded our database you know we do see a lot of intermediaries and broker types that we may not have otherwise reached out to but um it's really hard to find the right deal that's the right quality in these things I mean the profiles that you set up for what you're looking for are really important but it seems the intermediary community goes around those a lot and so it gets really cluttered and it's really difficult to find and that's part of what the quality issue is that cost referring to because he ended up getting a lot of stuff that really just is not even close to what you know your profile says you're looking for so it's here to stay you have to look at them we did you know chase one that we didn't do we're chasing one right now that knock on what we may actually close here next this week potentially or next week so I am going to say that we did find one and it can happen and I just feel like you kind of have to have this approach that cow also referenced earlier you gotta cast a wide net there's lots of different distribution channels that people are using we'll get to this enthusing donuts later in terms of picking one I think or you know but from our perspective we kind of have to look at all of them Marin's earthward painful before safety net or insurance policy that's my only comment yes all right do some don'ts so I'm going to commit the Cardinal presentation sin and I'm literally going to read these off the slide that is in front of you and you guys I guess the slides are available via an app so you guys all have this as well but panel please jump in talk over me color commentary where I really feel very strongly so let's go through the dudes do attach a teaser in the NBA together in an initial communication it's just more efficient when you're on an airplane using your phone to search to you know find the documentation to get a deal going so if you combine those that'd be great do extend NBA's in Word format so that we can modify them and insert the few things that we all have that are important and the Holy Grail to our firms a PDF is is difficult and so please send it in a Word document please leave a voicemail following an email for a deal there's a thousand emails we get I don't I never count how many I get in a day if it's too many so if you leave a voicemail as well some of the pin number the panelists wanted wanted that as well it helps you kind of call and cut through the things that you know you can either ignore an idea or when we finally get to your email I actually have a different view please send me an email because I am checking my email more often and checking my office voicemail so I guess you gotta do everything for us I personally think it's people I mean most people are not going to call but the problem is we're on the road so much you know often is the default where we go look at stuff and actually figure out what it is you're working on and trying to get our attention on but the emailing situation is it's like an epidemic if I just sat down and focus on just my emails answering and deleting and doing I may not still get through everything that came in in the - oh yeah so it has to find a way to get your deal to stand out today and that's why another issue with the deal portals you know it's just sitting there people need not ever get their attention on it yeah and actually I was speaking at this conference the AMA a at some point I think it was five or six years ago I think we were in Miami back and I was on a panel and we were talking about things like this and and I very you know full of myself said listen guys you know you don't need to follow up three times with a email or voice and okay I got you stop I'm gonna I'm gonna respond everybody just simmer down and and now now it's like please God to follow up if I haven't responded because I just I just missed it it was one of those things I didn't get to please speak it again so things change right um okay do include key data in the teaser we get so many teasers that don't mention what the company does where they're located you know for me if it's in Brazil or if it's in you know China that's not a business I can invest in but if it's here in North America I can and so please include these items that we've listed the sector the description geography revenue and even da-dew include the largest customer percentage in the business several of us that's a silver bullet for us if it has big customer concentration and for us big is over 40 percent that we're not going to do that no matter how great that deal is has nothing to do with you know what your baby looks like we're not going to do that deal so please include that in the teaser it's a quick way to to get to the decision do copy anyone on our team so if we send you an email we respond to an email and we've included our associate who's gonna execute the NDA or the deal team member who's going to actually look at this deal please reply all to all further to all further communications because those are the folks that are going to be turning your documents so please please do that is if you send just me the sim it's very possible that you're gonna have to ask me about it because you didn't hear back so that just happens and you do send teasers in the PDF format that's easy for us to process don't send teasers please please stop sending teasers that can only be accessed with a password to add data to a day to room it's really just to get a teaser that seems very unnecessary and and you got a creative password you gotta go in it's really a problem especially when you're doing this from the road please keep in mind that most of the stuff we're reading from you we're doing it on our phone valid point in fact most of the world Equipe these work remotely and most of our work is done with our with our cell phones if you have to attach in half the time those teasers aren't getting looked at you're probably getting passed and missed and for looking access and then you're frustrated that they give it you're not interested in it because they include the key indicative information up front yeah I would say even if SCIM try and keep a sim out of the data right yeah we don't want to do that first thing yeah I mean obviously confidentiality is an issue but we're under NDA and just try not to use the the data rooms for Sims alright I just got the five minute warning which is can we go with maybe five minutes over Marylou anyone fantastic we're gonna consume just a little bit of your room feel free to peel out if you if you need to we won't be you won't be upset I'm gonna let I think this was Richards or Lady Cavs don't post feels all over the universe you wanna you mention that yeah so along with what we discussed a couple minutes ago about the deal portals we've been noticing and seeing deals come from you know what I think is the original sell side intermediary right so there's one then we'll get it from three different by side intermediaries then we'll get it from a deal portal then we'll see it on a website so obviously you guys are trying to you know cast a wide net and likewise we're trying to do the same thing but it's a it can be a problem when you're getting the same deal from numerous different sources because the story that they're telling is always slightly different than what the original sell side intermediary is doing so if there's a way to consolidate that and keep it more organized it's so much more appreciative and then the other one is you know getting seeing the deals you know on day one and then day 60 you're seeing it again you know after being signed up from someone else and it's you know you're seeing the same deal you're spending time on the same deal so try and focus it to you know one or two possibly different channels here got it that kind of covers the the next bullet point I was a while the last one I don't don't send sins that exceed 50 megabytes which happened was from my colleague Heather you know art our system can't we can't open that again it seems kind of unnecessary that the data you would be sunny would consume that much space so trying to be mindful of that we I'm gonna kind of start rocketing through these oh the second one a deuce do views unique deal project names or code numbers in the subject line because we search that way all the time we we can't always remember you know your organization sent us an NDA or sim but we remember it was a hand tool deal you know if you put you know hand tool acquisition opportunity that's very searchable and our outlooks and in when we put it into Salesforce so please do that many many things come in that just say new opportunity new deal you know it's very generic very difficult search do forward relevant deal opportunities and attractive sectors regardless or size or perceived fit I think we all would rather see more from you rather than last because you never know what we're working on that that's in pipeline that we can't talk about yet for which your deal may be a great combination or an add-on so even if you think it's too small sendin anyways I think we all universally agree with that do include an e file the sim even if you're using a date or anything you say McConnell or mate before you call it follow up if you don't want to see feedback don't rely on us to spot this is your Scout once you do this one I don't use Valerius yeah I'm just gonna read it off here don't rely on us to spot a spam looking email from the data room service the fetch the sim send it to us as an email attachment PDF yes come speaks for itself okay and I have a comment to the do do call the peril of I do want to emphasize that you know as we've mentioned before something that we try really hard to get back to everyone with meaningful being Matt feedback in a timely manner one thing that's happened a couple of times to us is is someone called my boss to say well I said Jennifer this them and I haven't heard back from her I would say that's just that's not a good idea I single a mother relationship here I'm I'm doing my best to get back to you there's something going on there's an executive partner I haven't sent you an email I apologize but not a good idea to call my boss or other managing partners with the word founder on their names so that's that's happened one or two times just I would appreciate if you wouldn't do that oh very good um let's see one of us said call me don't email me okay we all have different needs I'm trying to be fair to everybody so so you got to do it off we gotta call us and you got it email us that's not that the only way you're gonna satisfy us off um don't fail to disclose any targets performance through the downturn if it's in a cyclical industry we get it you know we know things have cycled we just wanna know how hard if it's a business that only cycled 10% when the rest of the market was down 25% that's a positive it's okay it was down 10% if it's cycled 50% in a downturn that's probably too cyclical for many of us but not saying it doesn't get the front end it's not me we're not gonna find that out just tossed up front that's important do you know how to play both sides of the fence to get your deal done which is you know advising your your your seller if it's an engagement on how the things were asking for are not crazy or you know you know you all run into things where the demands we are making or requesting seem unreasonable to a business owner of course because they've never been through this process before so we're relying on you guys to coach them through and we're not asking you to represent us but represent the process really well and explain it to your seller so so we can both get to what we want which is a closed deal do discuss with us a bit about the company before asking us to sign a fee agreement we're gonna need before we sent a fee agreement is an is a much higher level of engagement and risk than just an NDA so if you want us to sign a fee agreement for a business number one we've got to search our databases make sure one of our other partners hasn't signed a few agreement in the past for this company or one of our portfolio companies at the portfolio company level we have to do a lot of searching we certainly don't want to be on the hook to two people for the same deal so we do the occasional inscription that I know you did Richard because you take the high road and that's know that makes you a really good story today we don't have time for let's keep it simple non-market and ehm so you guys know when your client has something crazy in there please give us a heads up like listen this guy will not sign any NDA under five-year term you know so just letting you know right now you know just let us know kind of these now and market things upfront and we'll make the decision go or no-go and I'm getting a five-minute again okay don't tell us what we are really missing on an opportunity that we just don't understand your deal we probably do and we probably have some burn history we have really some really good reason for not wanting to invest in that Specter or that type of business again don't send a deal inquiry to every person at my firm I think we all and when you send it to 12 people three people are going to jump on it it's going to cause duplicative effort we don't have time for that so if you could help us and pick you know your business development contact and if you want to throw another or two on that's fine but please don't email the 23 people here on capital