I spoke to a private equity investor recently. He described a recent sell-side process for one of their portfolio companies. They basically had no bake-off to vet investment bankers. They knew who their advisor would be – a middle-market bank that had done 15-20 deals in this space over the past couple years. The relationship was strong, the track record was real, and the expectation was clear: this would be a clean, efficient process with a defined buyer universe.
They talked about process structure. The advisor gave them a list of 15 or so high-priority buyers. Typical messaging: these are the folks who will preempt. A couple months into the process, all 15 pass. What to do now? Go broad. They then reach out to 150+ buyers. The process goes on for 6+ months. The prevailing buyer was a party none of them would have expected.
Practically every pitch, every process starts with the above structure. The investment banker differentiates by showcasing their network — by presenting a curated list of high-priority buyers with implied relationships behind each name. But relationships alone aren’t the asset. The asset is what those relationships can surface when activated ahead of launch — concrete conversations that test real interest, expose timing constraints, and reveal whether a buyer is actually positioned to move. That requires the advisor to facilitate it and the private company to be a willing participant before a formal process ever begins. Without both, the priority list is essentially stock-picking. It sounds compelling in a pitch, but in practice, it rarely produces the certainty it implies.
This is the gap Odin Mimir is built to close. We work with investment bankers and private companies to activate buyer relationships ahead of formal processes — not just maintain them. The platform surfaces real interest, frontruns timing constraints, and builds the kind of informed buyer universe that makes a priority list mean something. It works passively, at no cost, alongside existing workflows. So that when a process launches, the most important buyer isn’t a surprise — they’re already in the room.