We speak with co-founder Seb Lapinski about the ambitions of the private equity platform that says it’s more legaltech than fintech, and is backed by a who’s who of global deal firms
Dealstack, a private capital workflow automation platform founded by former Kirkland & Ellis partner Joel Arnell and ex-Oaktree Capital investor Seb Lapinski, has raised $5.5m seed funding led by angel investors from Paul Weiss, Kirkland, Latham & Watkins, KKR, CVC, TA Associates and Goldman Sachs, among others.
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Dealstack is modernising the tech that private equity firms and their M&A lawyers use by creating an application layer that will help them move away from disparate sources of data stuck in the likes of Excel spreadsheets, towards unlocking AI across private capital operations.
Founded in 2023, we’re told that Dealstack, which helps with ownership tracking, equity plan management and waterfall modelling, is now used by six of the top 10 private capital firms globally and seven of the top 10 global law firms by deal value.
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Speaking to Legal IT Insider, Lapinski (pictured above right) said Dealstack is more legaltech than fintech. He used to be an investor working in private capital, and Arnell was a senior lawyer. “You need someone like Joel and like me to come together to solve things,” he tells Legal IT Insider. “When there’s no system built for this you end up with with a mess of documents store in shared drives, Outlook, Excel spreadsheets and old school tools that AI can’t help with. That’s the problem we’re solving and the system we’re building.”
The funding will accelerate development and bring in a network of angels that will open doors for Dealstack. Lapinski said: “We’re releasing our last core model in the coming month or so and investing a lot in the AI space, which is the next level and requires the right cornerstones to be in place.”
He added: “I have spoken to so many people who would rather use humans than AI if there is any chance of it being wrong. We provide a deterministic model where the AI always provides the correct answer and can be verified, and customers are really excited about it.”
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