The Modern Deal Guy: The New Finance Solopreneur

The phrase "modern deal guy" ties directly to Jeremy Giffon, "We're firmly in the “deal guy” era. You can raise venture to make deals, you can do foreign policy via deals, build frontier tech via deals." It’s been popularized by him and Will Manidis, two guys, who I consider some of the smartest private investors around. 

This reflects a broader cultural/trend observation in tech, finance, and even geopolitics: success increasingly comes from deal-making, networks, structuring transactions, and leveraging connections rather than just building from scratch or traditional VC paths. A related post from another user captures the vibe: "the modern deal guy traffics first in arcane networks and only secondarily in capital... only a few can find you the best tailor north of 44th, the best loan workout guy in SF, the perfect pdf for your current crisis."

Basically you are a solopreneur but one who tracks in deal flow. A one person merchant bank leveraging the technology at one’s fingertips now. It’s a fascinating concept that  only comes to the fore in times of massive technological, economic and geopolitical change. The brave, insightful and connected takes advantage of this potential short term disequilibrium aka opportunity in the market. The modern deal guy is perfectly set up to take advantage of any glitch in the matrix.They have no institutional baggage or bureaucracy holding them back, so they can move quickly.    

For example, I have a friend of a friend who is an ex-supply chain guy working with a Central Asian country to build out a local auto manufacturing industry. He gets a cut of all the income generated from each of these factories he sets up. Imagine getting a percentage of this. This could net billions of dollars to him. Literal billions. 

Or the many individuals getting stock or secondaries allocation of hot companies like SpaceX, Stripe, Anduril or Anthropic and raising $$ via SPVs to invest. You sometimes get management fees but most of the time, you only get paid carry. Basically where you share the upside returns. I’m a bit concerned at the wild west nature of SPVs in 2025 & 2026 but it’s illustrative of the modern deal guy concept.

I know people who have made a crap ton of money sending potential candidate companies to PE firms for possible acquisition. A kind of affiliate referral fee play but with much bigger percentages and numbers. 

All of these examples are outcome driven. You don’t get paid until the deal happens. It’s literally eating what you kill. This is the ultimate edge of capitalism. Asymmetric risk at its finest. You can just do things! :)