Customer Story
Tourmaline Capital Partners
Learn how Tourmaline Capital Partners uses TermSheet
Tourmaline Capital Partners
Tourmaline Capital Partners, LLC is a Philadelphia-based real estate private equity firm formed in early 2021 that focuses on office investments throughout the Continental United States. TCP, along with its capital partners, intends to be one of the most acquisitive office investors in the U.S. over the coming years and has already acquired over 3.4M SF of real estate in the past year.
The Challenge
Tourmaline’s acquisitions team is responsible for reviewing every deal that comes in, evaluating which ones to pass on and which ones to pursue further and begin underwriting. Acquisition opportunities come from every source imaginable – brokers, off-market, sourced by a principal — deals come from all angles and all sorts of relationships. Ultimately, the acquisitions team must narrow down a huge mass of deals from multiple sources into the select ones that make it to the closing table.
To accomplish this, the team used Excel to keep track of everything – which became unwieldy as the information contained in each spreadsheet grew. Though each deal only contained the property name and a few key details, it was in constant need of manual update. “It got to the point where it was feeling a bit fragile – and that’s when we turned to TermSheet,” said acquisitions associate Alexander Stringfellow.
When it came to categorizing deals by the firm’s interest level or tracking a deal’s status as it moved toward closing or even calling up the details of a dead deal, Excel made things extremely difficult. There was no simple way to get a high level overview of Tourmaline’s deal universe.
Goals
- Organize deal pipeline by stage in process
- Categorize deal pipeline by level of interest
- Track dead deals
- Streamline weekly team pipeline meeting
The TermSheet Solution
Pipeline Management
“We have a large pipeline of deals coming in from all different places and TermSheet really allows us to keep everything organized in a very efficient manner,” said Stringfellow. Now, instead of Excel, the acquisitions team uses TermSheet for tracking the stage of every deal: whether they’ve toured the property, whether they’ve engaged with the seller, if it is under contract, if it is in the process of closing or if it is already closed.
The team also tracks deals based on the firm’s level of interest – whether a deal is seriously under consideration or simply undergoing a high-level screen. They use TermSheet to keep an eye on deals they may not be actively pursuing along with deals they have a high focus on or deals they are actively interested in but may be waiting on another party.
Dead Deal Analysis
Which deals have died throughout the process and why? This is a key question for the acquisitions team. Maybe they decide not to pursue it, maybe the seller backed out. TermSheet enables the team to easily see trends in why deals didn’t make it to the closing table and be prepared in case that changes. “It’s really good to keep track of those dead deals because oftentimes they resurrect and TermSheet allows us to go back through and see where we left off rather than having to start from scratch or dig through old files.”
Weekly Reports
“The reports feature is very useful. I’ve set it up to out every Monday morning at 5am so that the whole team can review it and update the pipeline. It allows us to reset every week and figure out what we need to be focusing on in the broader scheme of things.”
Why Tourmaline Loves TermSheet
World-class Support
“TermSheet has been very responsive in terms of customizing things for us – if we want to add a new dropdown or category for deals, for example,” said Stringfellow. Product improvements suggested by TermSheet customers are usually rolled out in days, rather than in weeks or months.
“The tech team is fantastic – very accommodating and willing to show me how to do things in the platform.” The TermSheet team works “startup” hours, meaning that you can email, call, or text us anytime.
Intuitive Platform
“If we want to rearrange a deal sheet it’s very easy to do that yourself; the drag and drop functionality makes it very easy and intuitive.” TermSheet makes it easy to configure your deal data according to your business’s specific needs.