This week we continue our conversation with David Petrucco, Ed Cerny, and Mark Gudis – founding partners of Backcast Partners Management. Backcast is a recently formed venture that focuses on providing direct debt and equity capital to middle market companies across industries. Second of two parts – View part one 

The Lead Left: So Mark, you’re in charge of sourcing. Tell me how you’re planning to manage that?

Mark Gudis: I see four main avenues, but all have one common denominator:  being highly proactive.  First, the traditional private equity route from a variety of firms we’ve done business with in the past, who not only trust our ability to deliver as promised, but also who understand how we behave at certain inflection points during the lifespan of an investment.  We work on plenty of “middle of the fairway” sponsored investments and compete well, aided by our ability to work on investments that require more thought and time.  Secondly, through financial intermediaries such as Houlihan Lokey, Baird, Blair, Duff & Phelps, Ray Jay and countless other smaller boutiques.  The latter include one to two person spinouts from larger brand name firms, and successful execution is so important for this sub-set.  Third, we’ve been doing this a long time, and often collaborate with our banking and club lender partner friends when it’s a win-win.  Finally, our COPs are spread out across the U.S. and are always seeing attractive opportunities in their own areas of expertise, in addition to Centre which sources thousands of opportunities, not all of which are ideally suited for a control equity buyout, meaning our capital might be helpful.