The Team Behind Pairs

A team across London, New York, Dubai and San Francisco, and a network of founders and investors that has grown by referral. This page is about how Pairs came to be and who runs it.

What Pairs Is

A Private Capital Network

Pairs is a private capital network for growth-stage companies and the investors who back them. A company that joins gets in front of family offices and institutional investors it could not reach on its own, and behind every introduction is a person who has read the deal, knows the investor and can say in a sentence why the two should meet. Investors join by referral and hear from us when there is a company worth their time.

Not A Marketplace, Not A Bank

Pairs is not a marketplace and it is not a bank. Nobody browses a list of deals here, nothing goes out as a batch, and we do not run rounds or set terms. What we do is open the door and explain why we opened it, and the company takes the meeting from there.

Why It Exists

A person decides who should hear about a company, and says why.

The founders came to this from years of putting founders in front of investors by hand, and the pattern was the same in every round they worked on. The introductions that mattered came through someone who knew both sides and could explain why the two should meet, and there was no way to get more of those by working harder. Pairs was built to make that kind of introduction repeatable.

The first version was people and phone calls. The platform came later, to hold the record of every conversation, the map of who knows whom across the network and the preparation that used to take a day, so the people could spend their time on the judgment. The network has grown by referral since the first introductions and it still works the way it did at the start.

What We Believe

JUDGMENT STAYS WITH PEOPLE

Every introduction here is decided by a person who has read the deal and knows the investor. A model could rank a list faster, and we do not let it, because the reason one investor should hear about one company is rarely in the data. It is slower, and it is why the introductions land.

THE MACHINE THAT SCALES IT

Behind that judgment runs a machine built to protect it: the record of every conversation, the map of who knows whom, the targeting, follow-up and scheduling done before anyone takes a call. It gathers in minutes what used to take hours, so people spend their time on the part only people can do.

Where We Are

Pairs works from four cities, London, New York, Dubai and San Francisco. The team sits where the members are, and it means the working day at Pairs runs from Dubai’s morning to San Francisco’s evening.