Deal Talk - Episode 8: Jeff Lieberman (Insight Partners)

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In the 8th episode of the Deal Talk series, Moonfare CEO and founder Steffen Pauls hosted Jeff Lieberman, a managing director at Insight Partner. Deal Talk events are regular fireside chats with leading global private equity dealmakers.

A seasoned private equity professional, Lieberman has spent the last 24 years scaling Insight, which is today considered the world’s largest growth-oriented software investment firm. Lieberman led investments in leading companies such as Qualtrics, DeliveryHero, HelloFresh, Cvent, Mimecast and Udemy.

In a conversation with Pauls, Lieberman discussed various aspects of growth equity through the lens of software investing. Some of the highlights include:

‍The rise of software. “The service-as-a-software (SaaS) fundamentally changed the ease of implementation, scalability, portability and extensibility of software. It changed our business from a cottage industry into a big industry. [...] Our general thesis is that the software business model is fundamentally an amazing model. It's highly recurring and high gross margin. If done well it can deliver great cash flows in the long term.”
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‍Why time to invest in tech is now? “Why did tech come out well after 9/11 and the great financial crisis? When businesses need to become more efficient, there is only one good global answer - transformation with technology, which equals software. If you want to drive more growth and less cost - it fundamentally comes down to software.”
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‍What makes Insight different? “For the last 20 years, we are focused on three things. The first one is getting a strong critical point of view with institutional experience to sort through a myriad of opportunities that come to us. [...] Two, we have a huge sourcing machine of deals. [...] Three, we have a big team of hundreds of people that can make an impact on our portfolio companies.”

Lieberman also talked about the role of data analytics in the firm’s decision-making process, the importance of learning from less successful deals and what makes a good entrepreneur.

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