Does it make sense to have a technical person on the search team?

professional profile

July 08, 2021

by a professional from Tufts University in San Francisco, CA, USA

Does anyone have in-house dev who is automating tasks, scraping/hitting APIs for deal listings. or otherwise? Does it make sense to have someone on the team with Python/SQL chops? If so, how have you used that skillset in the search process?

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commentor profile
Reply by a searcher
from Columbia University in New York, NY, USA
^redacted‌ since I am that person for our team, it's a bit shameless for me to take a stand. But let me play both sides of the argument:

On the side of indifference: Tech people like to get lost in the weeds of their process. Product managers and business leads I know have countless stories about a project headed the right direction until engineering over-stepped and pushed it into an area of irrelevance. It's very tempting to develop a lot of cool tech but then never actually DO the search. I thoroughly believe many of the best searchers will succeed with a good thesis, a telephone, and a lot of grit.

On the side of competitive advantage: It's very useful, and possibly your only chance at developing a true differentiation in your proprietary sourcing and outreach. Furthermore, if tech businesses are in your radar, then you'll need an advisory CTO or (would be) CTO to assess the business with you. If you don't have this resource locked in, this will be the assured linchpin of your personnel problems for years to come.

In both cases I would recommend one word: "focus." If tech-based sourcing and outreach is a part of your competitive advantage, then you need to invest and be serious. An intern who "knows some Python" is not what we're talking about here. Similarly, if you've decided it's not a core part of your value proposition, then don't get distracted.
commentor profile
Reply by a professional
from University of Texas at Austin in Houston, TX, USA
I think it's one of those things that, if executed correctly, could be beneficial and give you a leg up. However, the reality is that it's a bit tough to do effectively in terms of hitting APIs for deal listings, simply because very few brokers and marketplaces expose any sort of API (you can always scrape data but that does get a bit messy, if done incorrectly). So, it's definitely worth doing but it will take some time to get right and have it be effective to the point where it provides real value. In the meantime, I'd also recommend building relationships with various brokers and explaining your buying criteria to them, so they can bring some of that deal flow to you, instead of you having to search for it.

There are also other tasks where I think automation would be super helpful, whether that's creating in-house software to plug in data and compute internal metrics, analyze if the business is a good fit, or even create a PDF offering report for your investors to view, all of which will save you time and effort. I haven't done any Python/SQL in a year or so myself but if you do have any specific technical questions, I'll do my best to answer them. Hope this helps!
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