Deep Water research

Confirmed Lower-Middle-Market PE Users With Gershman Ryan Ties

Which specific named lower-middle-market PE firms ($200M–$2B AUM) are confirmed users of BOTH a deal-sourcing platform (Grata, SourceScrub, PitchBook, or Inven) AND a separate CRM (Affinity or DealCloud) — where the Head of Origination or COO has publicly signaled (LinkedIn post, conference panel, PE Hub quote, or Axial appearance) between June and November 2025 that their team is spending excessive manual analyst hours reconciling data across these disconnected tools or manually reviewing CIMs that automated intelligence should handle — AND who has a verifiable relationship (ACG committee overlap, LinkedIn first-degree, prior co-investment, or shared board seat) with David Gershman (Trivest, former ACG chair) or Dan Ryan (MidOcean, Head of BD) specifically — so DeepSignal can pitch its 'single source of truth' value proposition (eliminating the multi-tool data standardization gap that LMM firms can't resource internally) through these two under-leveraged referral nodes who have NOT yet been activated in prior outreach cycles, timed for POC conversion before March 19, 2026?

Jun 29, 202632 sources reviewed

Executive Summary

  • Systemic Data Friction: The lower-middle-market (LMM) private equity tech stack is highly fragmented. Over half of PE firms currently use more than four distinct data sources for deal sourcing [2], leading to a dynamic where most deal teams rely on disparate tools held together manually with spreadsheets [3].
  • Cost of Manual Reconciliation: Inefficient data standardization is a massive resource drain. Approximately 75% of PE professionals identify the inability to consolidate siloed business systems as a major organizational challenge [17], contributing to investors spending over 21 hours—and up to 60 hours—per week solely on research and pipeline evaluation [15].
  • Key Referral Nodes Identified: David Gershman (Partner/GC, Trivest Partners) and Dan Ryan (Head of BD, MidOcean Partners) represent highly strategic, under-leveraged network nodes for DeepSignal's outreach. Both leaders overlapped on the Association for Corporate Growth (ACG) Global Board of Directors until April 2024 [8], [21], providing them with unparalleled visibility into LMM PE tech-stack struggles.
  • Critical Intelligence Gap: The currently available evidence corpus does not contain specific, public declarations (e.g., LinkedIn posts, PE Hub quotes) from Heads of Origination or COOs made specifically between June and November 2025 regarding manual data friction. To meet the March 19, 2026 POC conversion deadline, immediate supplemental intelligence gathering is required to generate the final list of end-target firms.

1. The Operational Data Gap in LMM Sourcing Stacks

The modern deal-sourcing ecosystem requires blending relationship development with data-driven research and integrated technology [5]. However, PE deal teams face severe operational friction when attempting to bridge their top-of-funnel sourcing platforms (e.g., Grata, SourceScrub, PitchBook, Inven) with internal CRM systems (e.g., Affinity, DealCloud).

The Cost of Fragmentation

Most PE teams operate with a highly disjointed stack: one tool for sourcing, another for relationship management, a third for outreach, and "Excel holding everything together with duct tape" [3]. Because legacy manual processes lack uniform standards, traceability, and flexibility [7], data becomes stockpiled in disparate silos across the tech stack [33]. This fragmentation in PE-backed companies is directly tied to poor data governance and a lack of proper data capture [4].

The friction manifests in severe operational inefficiencies:

  • Time Wasted: Affinity data reveals that over half of investors spend more than 21 hours per week on deal research, with nearly a quarter (24%) dedicating an unsustainable 41 to 60 hours weekly [15].
  • Screening Bottlenecks: Incomplete or inaccurate startup data significantly complicates the initial screening process [19], while managing technical debt and data quality consumes an estimated 33% of developer time [6].
  • Resource Drain: Manual data entry and continuous reconciliation expose LMM firms to costly human errors and consume critical personnel time, which directly hinders proactive deal-sourcing [20], [32].

Insufficiency of Current Native Integrations

Vendors have attempted to address these gaps through point-to-point integrations. For example, DealCloud's DataCortex integrates with PitchBook [22] and SourceScrub [35] to reduce the manual labor of copying and pasting data into Word documents and spreadsheets [9]. Similarly, Grata [16] and Inven [29] offer APIs designed to streamline lead management into existing CRMs.

However, these native connections merely push data from one node to another without standardizing the underlying institutional memory, which too often remains trapped in individual team members' inboxes rather than structured pipelines [31].

2. Network Centrality for Warm Referrals: Gershman & Ryan

To bypass cold outreach, DeepSignal must leverage established LMM nodes. David Gershman and Dan Ryan represent ideal launchpads for the Q1 2026 POC conversion sprint due to their overlapping tenure at the epicenter of middle-market dealmaking: the Association for Corporate Growth (ACG).

The Shared ACG Nexus

Both leaders served concurrently on the ACG Board of Directors, their terms ending at DealMAX in April 2024 [8], [21] (with Steve Castino taking over as Chairman for 2024-2025 [34]). This shared governance experience provides a verifiable relationship vector for outreach.

David Gershman (Trivest Partners)

  • Role & Network: Gershman has been with Trivest Partners since May 2002 [36], starting as General Counsel [40] before his promotion to Partner [27], [23].
  • Market Position: Trivest specifically targets Founder/Family-owned businesses in North America [38]. Their Fund V closed at $415 million [25] (utilizing Shannon Advisors as placement agent [1] and Greenberg Traurig as counsel [14]), placing them squarely in DeepSignal's target $200M–$2B AUM criteria.
  • Influence: Beyond his firm, Gershman served as Chair of the ACG Global Board until May 2023 [10], [11] and holds board seats at several Trivest portfolio companies, including ATX Networks, Hazmasters, and Herbal Magic [12].

Dan Ryan (MidOcean Partners)

  • Role & Network: Ryan serves as the Head of Business Development on the Private Equity Investment Team at MidOcean Partners [13].
  • Historical Reach: Prior to MidOcean, he was Partner and Head of BD at Milestone Partners, where he served on the portfolio monitoring team and sat on several Milestone portfolio company boards [26], [37].
  • Influence: A Georgetown University alum [39], Ryan joined the ACG board in 2022 [24] and brings deep operational insight into the business development hurdles PE firms face when scaling data infrastructure.

Strategy: Pitching DeepSignal's "single source of truth" value proposition to Gershman and Ryan focuses not on software features, but on risk mitigation and enterprise value creation—specifically, how eliminating multi-tool data gaps saves portfolio companies and BD teams from the resource constraints that hinder consistent deal flow [32].

3. Current Data Centralization Workarounds

To achieve a Single Source of Truth (SSOT), organizations must first identify their varied data sources and overcome fragmentation [30]. Firms currently attempting to bridge the sourcing-CRM gap rely on two distinct models, both of which present opportunities for DeepSignal to position itself as a superior alternative.

Workaround Strategy Implementation Profile Strategic Trade-Offs Opportunity for DeepSignal
Native API Workflows Connecting Grata/PitchBook natively to DealCloud/Affinity via provided plugins [16], [22]. Reduces copy-pasting [9], but inherits upstream data errors. Leaves historical data siloed [33]. DeepSignal acts as an intelligent normalization layer, verifying and correcting fragmented CRM data autonomously.
Internal Data Hires Hiring dedicated data scientists (e.g., Clifford Cohn at WiL hiring an infrastructure manager) [28]. Creates process definitions and ownership [28], but is cost-prohibitive for $200M-$2B AUM firms. Provides automated, enterprise-grade data intelligence without the fixed overhead of internal developer headcount.

4. Limitations & Open Questions

While the systemic friction between sourcing platforms and CRMs is heavily validated, the provided dataset contains critical limitations regarding DeepSignal's specific go-to-market constraints:

  1. Missing Temporal Signals: The data lacks verifiable public signals (LinkedIn, PE Hub, panels) from LMM COOs or Heads of Origination explicitly dated between June and November 2025.
  2. Specific Target Firms: Aside from Trivest, MidOcean, Milestone, and WiL (who utilized an internal data hire [28]), the data does not explicitly name other specific $200M–$2B AUM PE firms utilizing the exact DealCloud/Affinity + SourceScrub/Pitchbook/Grata/Inven combinations.
  3. Next Steps: DeepSignal analysts must execute a targeted scrape of LinkedIn posts and ACG DealMAX panel transcripts from H2 2025 focusing on the keywords "technical debt", "data pipelines", and "manual CIM review" among second-degree connections of Dan Ryan and David Gershman.

Sources

[1] Trivest Closes Fifth Private Equity Fund Above Target — https://peprofessional.com/2012/10/trivest-closes-fifth-private-equity-fund-above-target/ · professional [2] Deal sourcing: What it is, how it works, and best practices — https://www.affinity.co/blog/deal-sourcing-meaning-process-strategies-tools · professional [3] 25 Private Equity Deal Sourcing and Analysis Tools (2026): Reviewed by Use Case — https://www.sourcecodeals.com/blog/pe-tools · professional [4] A 3-Phase Approach to Creating a Single Source of Truth Data Environment for FP&A and Enterprise Analytics — https://e78partners.com/blog/a-3-phase-approach-to-creating-a-single-source-of-truth-data-environment-for-fpa-and-enterprise-analytics/ · professional [5] Private Equity Deal Sourcing: Strategies, Processes, and Best Practices — https://grata.com/resources/private-equity-deal-sourcing · professional [6] Deal Sourcing Strategies and Pipeline Management for Investors — https://qubit.capital/blog/deal-sourcing-pipeline-management · professional [7] Automating the Private Equity Data Pipeline: Key Benefits and Considerations for GPs — https://www.chronograph.pe/automating-the-private-equity-data-pipeline-key-benefits-and-considerations-for-gps/ · professional [8] Meet ACG’s New Chair and Board Members for 2024-2025 — https://middlemarketgrowth.org/acg-chair-board-members-2024-2025/ · professional [9] Private equity analytics: Using data to discover deals — https://www.intapp.com/blog/private-equity-analytics-using-data-discover-deals/ · professional [10] FinalScout - Find anyone's professional email address — https://finalscout.com/people/david_gershman · general [11] Meet ACG’s New Chair and Board Members — https://middlemarketgrowth.org/acg-new-board-members-2022/ · professional [12] Trivest Partners Announces Partner Promotions — https://www.trivest.com/trivest-partners-announces-partner-promotions/ · professional [13] Dan Ryan | MidOcean Partners — https://www.midoceanpartners.com/people/dan-ryan · professional [14] Trivest Closes Fifth Private Equity Fund Above Target — https://peprofessional.com/2012/10/trivest-closes-fifth-private-equity-fund-above-target/ · professional [15] Deal sourcing: What it is, how it works, and best practices — https://www.affinity.co/blog/deal-sourcing-meaning-process-strategies-tools · professional [16] 25 Private Equity Deal Sourcing and Analysis Tools (2026): Reviewed by Use Case — https://www.sourcecodeals.com/blog/pe-tools · professional [17] A 3-Phase Approach to Creating a Single Source of Truth Data Environment for FP&A and Enterprise Analytics — https://e78partners.com/blog/a-3-phase-approach-to-creating-a-single-source-of-truth-data-environment-for-fpa-and-enterprise-analytics/ · professional [18] Private Equity Deal Sourcing: Strategies, Processes, and Best Practices — https://grata.com/resources/private-equity-deal-sourcing · professional [19] Deal Sourcing Strategies and Pipeline Management for Investors — https://qubit.capital/blog/deal-sourcing-pipeline-management · professional [20] Automating the Private Equity Data Pipeline: Key Benefits and Considerations for GPs — https://www.chronograph.pe/automating-the-private-equity-data-pipeline-key-benefits-and-considerations-for-gps/ · professional [21] Meet ACG’s New Chair and Board Members