Proprietary Deal Flow

Opportunities an investor sees because of who they know or what they have done, rather than because the opportunity was sent to a list.

Example

A former colleague mentions the company they are advising before it has started raising.

The honest test is counterfactual: remove your relationships and history, and would it still have reached you? If yes, it is not proprietary.

Deal Flow — The stream of investment opportunities that reach an investor, across every channel they arrive through.
Warm Introduction — An opportunity introduced by someone who knows both the investor and the founder, rather than a cold approach.
Adverse Selection — The tendency for the opportunities most available to you to be systematically worse than average, precisely because the better ones were taken by someone with earlier access.

In private markets, who you know decides what you see — Private companies are not listed anywhere. Networks determine the deals an investor hears about, the quality of diligence they can do and whether founders choose them. (9 min)
The best opportunities are rarely the ones being shown to everyone — Deal flow is not one thing. It arrives through channels with very different quality, and the channel an opportunity came through tells you something before you have read a word of it. (10 min)
Being findable and useful beats hunting — Proprietary deal flow comes from relationships and reputation built before you need them. Writing publicly, helping operators and being easy to reach compound over years in a way that outreach campaigns do not. (11 min)