Replay

The New Deal Sourcing Playbook: How early adopter GPs are using Agentic AI to find off-market opportunities

IPEM Community

01:01:50

While most investors rely on traditional intermediated deal flow, a small group of early adopters are deploying agentic AI systems that reason, monitor continuously and act autonomously to expand their market coverage and surface proprietary opportunities before competitors even know they exist. But adoption is far from universal. Many firms remain sceptical, questioning data quality, team adoption challenges and whether these tools deliver meaningful ROI beyond time savings.

As the technology matures and adoption accelerates across the industry, critical questions emerge:

When traditional deal flow becomes increasingly competitive, how are early adopters building proprietary sourcing advantages?
Are agentic AI tools simply making existing workflows faster or are they fundamentally changing what deals get sourced?
What patterns emerge when these systems operate at scale - and how do early adopters capture opportunities while competitors wait on the sidelines?

Speakers

Henry Lindemann

Chief Growth Officer & Co-Founder @ Blueflame

Henry Lindemann brings a decade of experience of business growth and client support in the alternative investment sector. Prior to joining Blueflame, he spent seven years at ACA Group, where he held various roles, including leading strategic sales and heading the Cyber and ESG sales division. Henry's business development background extends to positions at Kela, Eze Software Group, and ConvergEx Group. He holds a B.A. in Global Studies from the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Philippe Laval

CTO @ Jolt Capital

As our CTO, Philippe leads a team of talented developers and engineers in building our AI-powered tool Ninja. With this proprietary software, we are able to dynamically follow and analyze a database of 2M companies (for dealflow, DD or competitive intelligence purposes).

A serial entrepreneur with a passion for optimizing big data search algorithms, Philippe founded and led both Evercontact (a service that automatically keeps your address book and your CRM up-to-date) and Sinequa (a Gartner and Forrester leader in enterprise search). He is inventor or co-inventor of two issued patents on NLP and AI.

Philippe shares his time between San Francisco and Paris, and in August you would generally find him kite-surfing around Île de Houat. He is also a published author (“Winter is NOT coming,” a book on Games of Thrones and Management).

He graduated from Telecom Paris Tech and holds a PhD in AI and NLP.

Philippe was a board member of Sinequa, until the exit in 2024.

Nick Grouf

Founder, Investor & Managing Partner @ Alpha Edison

Nick Grouf is an entrepreneur, investor, and philanthropist known for his contributions to technology and venture capital. He founded Firefly Network in 1995, pioneering collaborative filtering technology still used by Amazon and Netflix. After Microsoft acquired Firefly in 1998, he co-founded PeoplePC, which went public in 2000 before merging with Earthlink. Grouf also launched Spot Runner, making TV advertising accessible to small businesses. Beyond his ventures, Grouf has helped incubate successful startups like Loot Crate and Pluto TV. He is currently co-founder and managing partner at Alpha Edison, a venture capital firm that invests in early-stage companies using AI, data, and behavioral science. Grouf currently serves on the boards of The Hammer Museum, Trajal Harrell Dance Company, and Walther School Foundation. He has funded a pediatric neurology study at Cornell and established scholarships at Harvard, Yale, and the Horace Mann School. A native New Yorker, Grouf holds degrees from Yale and Harvard Business School. He and his wife are raising three daughters in Los Angeles, where they are avid supporters of the arts and education.

Adam Ciborowski

Principal @ RCP Advisors

Adam is head of RCP’s Research, Performance, and Monitoring (“RPM”) Group. The RPM group is responsible for leading critical functions across the firm’s investment research and monitoring processes, in addition to driving performance initiatives across the RCP family of funds.

Prior to joining RCP, he was a Senior Auditor at Ernst & Young. Adam received a BS and Master’s degree in Accounting from Miami University. He received his MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.