How a family office principal screens co-investment deal flow from a dozen group chats
Sponsors pitch co-investments wherever the principal will answer. A walkthrough of keeping the good ones and saying no to the rest without losing track.
This walkthrough is an illustrative composite built from common dealmaker workflows. Names, firms and figures are invented. It is not a customer story.
The flow
Elena runs investments for a single-family office. She has no deal team, one analyst, and a reputation that brings in more co-investment offers than she can read. Most arrive as messages: a sponsor’s WhatsApp group, a Telegram channel run by a placement agent, a LinkedIn DM from a fund she met once.
Her problem is not finding deals. It is remembering which sponsor sent what, what she already passed on, and which conversation holds the terms she asked for.
Where it usually breaks
- Group chats bury the offer. A teaser posted to a forty-person group is gone by lunch.
- Passes are forgotten. The same deal comes back through a second sponsor and nobody remembers the first look.
- The analyst works blind. Elena forwards screenshots, and context goes missing in the hand-off.
Running it in Merger
Every channel in one list
Elena connects the messaging accounts sponsors use to reach her. Group chats, channels and direct messages sit in one list, and she replies on each network from Merger.
Offers reviewed, not hoarded
With her own Anthropic API key connected, Claude flags messages that look like an offer and shows where they came from. She files the ones worth a look on her Deal Desk and dismisses the rest.
Sponsors remembered
Each sponsor’s contact details, picked up from introductions, sit in her Rolodex with the conversation they came from. When a sponsor returns with a new deal, the history is one click away.
A clear record of passes
Deals she passes on stay on the desk with their source, so when the same company appears through another sponsor, she can see it was already reviewed.