The Perfect Match
Forget about online dating. Matchmaking in the investment banking world is probably less fun, but potentially much more profitable.
WHEN SEAN RAD started Tinder back in 2012 he could hardly have predicted how successful the company would become. In less than two months after inception, the dating app made more than one million matches, and Tinder picked up the prestigious (I’m told) ‘best new start-up of 2013’ award at the Crunchies – TechCrunch’s annual awards.
The rest is a history still in the making, with more than 50 million users across 196 countries and 1.6 billion ‘swipes’ per day.
I’ve not used the app, but I get the idea. You register a profile; detail your preferences; upload a picture (essential I gather) and then you’re offered a bunch of other people to ‘connect’ with as complex algorithms go to work in the process of helping you meet your match. While online dating has been around for a while, doing it on a smartphone is a relatively recent development – and a sound one based on the love affairs we already have with our mobile devices.
How nice it must be to use that relationship (firmly planted) to help with other relationships (waiting to bud). It’s certainly helping people get together – for any number of reasons ranging from the desire for a brief liaison (I really can’t put it any more delicately) to a long-lasting (theoretically permanent) association. In this day and age, when no one seems to have sufficient time on their hands, it’s a very efficient way of cutting through the crap and not having to spend endless hours wining and dining, cooing and wooing, glistening and listening to find someone to whom you might be better suited than the son or daughter of your aunt’s best friend’s hairdresser. Now imagine how this would work in the world of investments. Too far-fetched? Think again. The investment world is all about relationships, with detractors probably suggesting that it’s more about who you know than what you know. Previous capital market debacles and meltdowns would point to that. Success is often dependent on the trust garnered over the course of a career, along with a reputation for being adept and knowing what you’re doing, but this takes time. Much like how forging a relationship in the dating game used to be.
BankerBay is the ‘world’s first deal origination platform’, according to its website, that uses a ‘complex algorithmic approach to match middle-market corporates seeking capital with the most relevant providers of capital anywhere in the world.’ You register a profile (in ‘just a few easy steps’); detail your preferences; and… I think a picture is probably optional. What you’re looking for is an ideal ‘deal partner’.
“So, basically, it’s Tinder for the middle-market investment world,” I suggest to BankerBay’s CEO, Romesh Jayawickrama.
“I’d prefer to think of it more in terms of Match. com or eharmony,” he says, surely hoping that I will not ask why. I guess it’s because the latter two are a
little more mature and don’t have the ‘one-night stand’ connotations that Tinder may have (and there I was trying to be delicate). “Our clients are definitely looking for a long-term relationship.”
It all seems like a good idea, so why hasn’t it been done before?
“After I had my light-bulb moment,” continued Jayawickrama, “I thought the basic concept was suspiciously simple not to have been previously conceived. Of course it was, and it had. After researching the landscape, however, I realised that we were looking at this in a slightly different way to the others, and felt there was a place for us in the market, and a better way in which to use technology to connect buyers and sellers of companies.”
BankerBay is trying to change an industry whose approach, according to Jayawickrama, “has not changed fundamentally in more than 200 years. It’s predicated on people and relationships, and we didn’t expect to change that overnight. Even though we use technology in the ‘heavy lifting’ of the deal origination and deal making process, we still have a human element to the user experience, with our team of analysts. However,” he continued, “we’re finding that the industry is getting more accepting of technology driving us forward, so even that level of light touch is required less and less.”
Matchmaking investors and investees is clearly just the start of the process, but it’s something that can take a great deal of time, so BankerBay’s ever-burgeoning database and the algorithms the company uses have to be spot on. What seems to be key here, however, is the lack of limitation.
Global access to people and companies who are looking for something specific need go no further – in
BankerBay is trying to change an industry whose approach, according to Jayawickrama, “has not changed fundamentally in more than 200 years”.
fact they hardly need to go anywhere at all, until such time as the push comes to the shove, meetings are convened, and contracts are drawn up. The exercise can take nine months. But if everyone knows what they’re after, and the fit appears to be a good one, even that process can probably be expedited as efficiently and seamlessly as possible.
No more awkward ‘first dates’ in which both parties are mining for information and looking for chemistry. No more, “will they call?” or “how much time do I leave it before I make the next move?”
On BankerBay, everyone knows what they want and what they’re there for, which is, I suppose, refreshing. Is it working? I ask.
“That’s a difficult question to answer objectively,” says Jayawickrama, “so I’ll give you some facts. We are now the biggest deal platform in the world with US$25-30 billion of new deals submitted to us each month. At this point, that equates to having more than 6,000 live, investible mid-market deals on BankerBay today, which is something that we’re proud of. We’re a fast-growing company and have so much yet to tackle and achieve, and it’s no coincidence that my hair has thinned and turned grey since 2014. My hopes, apart from some magical hair growth and colour treatment, is that BankerBay becomes a permanent part of the investment banking landscape and continues to push innovation. We want to boldly go where no banker has gone before.”
It’s never a bad thing to end with an indirect quote from Star Trek, and while BankerBay is a fair bit of science without the fiction, I’d rather refer back to two satisfied Tinder customers who’ve made the right connections, struck the right match and are now living in harmony. That’s something we can all relate to.