Francesco Calia

Building Quido: AI infra for private capital. Raised $2M. Ex-PE. Hyperfocused.

[Francesco Calia @caliafp]

@harris best part is they already know you when the deck shows up later

[Francesco Calia @caliafp]

that's the founder I'd bet on in vertical AI. someone who got paid to produce something they privately thought was useless. they know which page 80 matters and which other 79 pages can go

[Francesco Calia @caliafp]

"we used to make these reports for our portfolios, and think they're kind of BS"

an ex Blackstone investor told Axios that about GP reports. then he built a company around fixing it. best founder origin line I've read in a while

[Francesco Calia @caliafp]

I know that feeling way too well. as a PE analyst I built company profiles for days knowing most of it would get skimmed. you keep doing it because the format is the format and nobody senior wants to be the one who changes it

[Francesco Calia @caliafp]

@jasonlk the $5k customers also tend to be the ones who actually stick around

[Francesco Calia @caliafp]

ottobre tra milano e firenze, sul palco con alcuni dei migliori investitori di private equity in italia.
grazie a chi mi ha invitato e a tutti i relatori. si torna a casa con più domande che risposte, ed è il bello.

[Francesco Calia @caliafp]

@sridharfyi and sometimes both happen before lunch

[Francesco Calia @caliafp]

@gokulr @nikesharora yep, once building gets cheap the moat is owning more of the customer's workflow

[Francesco Calia @caliafp]

@jasonlk founders who think sales is icky usually just never watched a great rep close

[Francesco Calia @caliafp]

@harris yep, and the teams that win are the ones still shipping weekly at 50 people

[Francesco Calia @caliafp]

@HarryStebbings same shift here in europe, a year ago it was a slide, now it's a reason to exist

[Francesco Calia @caliafp]

honestly I get why partners sign. a lot of these firms needed tech money badly.

but if I'm on the buy side reading an audit next year, my first question is who owns the shop next door

https://t.co/Utwlo6UAYE

[Francesco Calia @caliafp]

more than a third of the 750 biggest US accounting firms are now PE backed.

so the partner signing your audit opinion often works for a fund that needs an exit.

[Francesco Calia @caliafp]

regulators noticed. the AICPA put out a new draft on Nov 3: if a fund controls the side entity, the fund itself counts as a network firm, and the audit firm can't audit anything that fund has significant influence over. the first draft got 81 comment letters

[Francesco Calia @caliafp]

@garrytan calendar alone would justify it honestly

[Francesco Calia @caliafp]

@jasonlk the math is why a $1B fund can't get excited about a great $300m outcome

[Francesco Calia @caliafp]

@ARCHEPERSONA @sridharfyi Or raise and time to scale