The Modern Deal Guy Part Deux: Financier for Chaotic Times

I am quite taken by the concept of the “Modern Deal Guy” as described by Jeffrey Giffon and Will Manidis. A concept whose time has arrived. I wrote about it previously but figured it’s worth exploring further. Will wrote a detailed description below:

“the modern deal guy has no permanent capital, no permanent loyalty, and no permanent location. 

the modern deal guy is playing a repeated game, he doesn't care who he pisses off, there's going to be another hand. 

the modern deal guy is much more a broker than a principal. 

he has an ecosystem around him that identify as "his guys" the modern deal guy has 99% of his chips on the table at any given moment, the next hand will always be bigger. 

the modern deal guy is reticent to monetize any given opportunity early, but when he decides its time to sell, he does so savagely and without concern for fallout. 

the modern deal guy is only concerned about where he spends his time. he runs a schedule like a CAA agent 

the modern deal guy is only constrained by sourcing talent to put behind ideas at scale, capital and opportunity sets are infinite 

the modern deal guy either has an exhaustively curated public persona, or none at all, anything in the middle is a mess. 

the modern deal guy has very little concern for whats "on the paper", he's playing a very different game of pressure and repetition 

the modern deal guy is unusually concerned about studying history and learning from adjacencies. 

the modern deal guy has a personal burn that would make your nose bleed. 

all in service of maximum optionality the modern deal guy can be better thought of as a "franchise" rather than a firm. 

the modern deal guy will generate dozens of lesser deal guys that will repeat the playbook in his stead.”

Source: https://x.com/WillManidis/status/1980644725427433546

To sum up, to be successful as a Modern Deal Guy, one needs to be self reliant & flexible, able to size up and handle risk well, is used to operating by himself and has the courage to make tough decisions. They are pattern recognizers supreme, who also understand and read people well. Probably also able to have a great understanding of various asset classes, geopolitics and global macro. 

A Modern Deal Guy is the epitome of the term “live player” or in Silicon Valley parlance, has “high agency.” They are willing to get on that airplane to go where they need to go. Traveling to where the action is, to surface opportunities. And ultimately to meet and close the deal if necessary. 

Will goes on to say: “the last decade of tech rewarded "investors"- as price discovery was so efficient/low dispersion in high growth internet co's that you just had to win and hold for a long time. the "deal guy era" is an era of traders, not investors. you all have no idea what’s coming.”

I think he is right. The Modern Deal Guy will be the right type of financier appropriate for the massive amounts of change and chaos of the roaring 2020s.