Business development (or BD) in private equity is about originating deal opportunities through proactive networking, relationship-building, and market coverage, ensuring the firm has strong visibility and access to the best investment prospects.

For smaller firms, the BD role generally falls to the senior investment or founding team - leveraging existing intermediary and other connections to source and review deals. Larger firms generally have dedicated teams or individuals to handle this role.

So how to find these folks inside Mergr?

Here's how.

Navigate to the M&A Professionals search page.

Once on the M&A Professional Search page, enter 'business development' in the Keyword Title field and select Search.

Your results will contain all 'true match' business development professionals - those that have 'business development' in their title.

However many team members leave the specifics of their investor role to the bio - so to broaden your search, it's worth entering 'business development' in the Keyword Bio field as well.

The above search works for identifying new BD contacts and discovering new investors as a result. However, if you're interested in seeing who might have this role at a specific investor - the best method is to navigate to an Investors Team page and search Bios at the firm level.

Here's how.

Enter the firm you're interested in.

Once on the Firm's main page - navigate to the investor's Team tab.

Once on the Firm's Team tab - enter 'business development' in the Search field at the top of the table. This field will keyword search Names, Titles, and Bios. Select Enter.

If there are any matches - the result set will show them.