Case study – private equity
The sourcing desk the fund never had to hire.
Proprietary outreach was a channel this North American lower-middle-market private equity firm had never run in-house. AI agents built by Analyst3 defined the markets, researched and qualified 904 owners, and ran a personalised sequence behind the firm's own brand – about 330 modelled hours of work that no one there had the capacity to do.
Results
Ten weeks of proprietary origination, without a hire.
- 904
- owners researched and enrolled
- Qualified against the firm's criteria before contact
- 5
- niche markets defined and screened
- Each approved by the firm before any outreach
- ~330h
- work absorbed
- Modelled, about 33 hours a week over ten weeks
- ~$25K
- value of time absorbed
- Modelled, over ten weeks
The challenge
A channel the firm had never run in-house.
The firm's deal flow came through intermediaries and its own network. Proprietary outreach to owners was not something it had ever run, and the partner who would have owned it was already carrying origination alongside live deals. The constraint was not conviction about the channel. It was that standing one up means research, list building, contact identification, writing and follow-up in volume, week after week, and nobody had that time. Doing it badly carried its own cost, because outreach in the firm's name puts the firm's reputation in front of every owner it touches.
- Proprietary sourcing had never been run at the firm
- Origination sat with a partner already carrying live deals
- Volume outreach in the firm's name puts its reputation on the line
- Hiring for it meant a full-time researcher before knowing the channel worked
What went live
An origination desk, run by AI agents.
Markets defined before lists
Agents propose niche sub-markets inside the firm's mandate, with the screen written out. The firm approves the market before a single company is researched, so the list is never the thing under debate.
Owners researched, not scraped
Each company is qualified against size, ownership and sector criteria, then the owner is identified and verified. 904 owners went through that before anyone was contacted.
The firm's voice, the partner's approval
Every message and every reply is drafted in the partner's own register and held for approval. He edits or sends with one click; nothing leaves without him.
Reputation kept at arm's length
Outreach runs on separate authenticated domains, warmed before use, so the firm's own domain is never exposed to volume sending.
Qualified before the diary is touched
On a second channel, Analyst3 approaches owners as a buy-side advisor and screens them on a call first. The partner meets the ones that clear.
Everything visible
The firm sees every lead, every message and every reply in one place, with the campaign's progress against plan.
The work, in volume
What the agents did in ten weeks.
| Activity | Volume |
|---|---|
| Niche markets defined and screened | 5 |
| Owners researched, qualified and enrolled | 904 |
| Owners contacted to date | 665 |
| Queued for contact | 239 |
| Personalised emails sent | 2,248 of 3,616 planned |
| Largest single list cleared in one review pass | 318 |
Volumes are actuals from the campaign data. Hours are modelled, not client reported: per-unit times are Analyst3 estimates of the same work done by hand, applied to those volumes. The figure is an estimate of work absorbed, not a saving the firm has reported, and it does not rest on reply rates, meetings or a closed transaction. Full assumptions are available on request.
What's realistic
A channel being proven, not a closed loop.
The campaign has been live for ten weeks. What it has established so far is that the firm can run proprietary outreach at volume, in its own voice, without putting its domain or its reputation at risk, and without anyone there doing the work. Owner outreach at this end of the market is a long game, and the honest position at ten weeks is that the channel is standing and being tuned rather than that it has produced a platform.
Why it matters
A capability, not a campaign
The firm now has a sourcing channel it did not have, running every week, rather than a project that ended.
The partner's time stays on deals
The research, writing and follow-up happen without him. What reaches him is a decision: approve, edit, or meet.
The brand never goes out unsupervised
Separate sending infrastructure, the partner's own words, and his approval on every message.
It scales without a hire
Adding markets adds list volume, not headcount.
Want a sourcing desk without hiring one?
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