The Dealmaker

My dad and I went out to dinner with some friends and then the friends' friend and girlfriend. (Just for clarification, my dad is 1, I am 2, the friends are 3 & 4 and the guy and the girlfriend are 5 & 6.)

It was a good meal, interesting conversation, nice people. The friends' friend explained that he was a dealmaker and mentioned that he was in the process of finalizing a deal. He started asking my dad some tax information (my dad being a tax accountant and all).

In the process, he began explaining what he does. What he does is find a company (or one finds him) where the company is not operating efficiently or needs more funding because the founders want to take the company to the next level.

But there are problems.

Founders are frequently idea people, scientists or artistic types. They lack the capital to do what they want yet are worried about losing control to financial types. Also, there can (and usually are) problems particular to the individual deal: to finish up a recent deal, the dealmaker literally moved in with the founders to help with the myriad of problems that previously prevented the founder from accomplishing what he wanted to accomplish. The work he does just sounds facinating.



At some point my dad brought up a husband and wife scientist team he knows who, through their brilliance have created a diagnostic tool that has the potential to help find cures for several diseases. Their work is so incredibly exciting, yet it is so hard to convince people of its worth not least because they have a hard time explaining the potentialities of their work in terms that laymen (i.e. money people) can understand. And, to continue and accelerate their work, they need more money.

What they really need is a dealmaker to help them.



The thing that got to me is that the Communistic/Socialistic/Particpatory Economics view of the world, the dealmaker is basically a middleman, and middlemen are worth nothing, stealing profits from the 'real' workers. But this guy has helped people. And he could be the answer for my dad's scientist friends in their quest to cure cancer, AIDS, Alzheimer's and the common cold.

What he does adds so much value to the individual companies, he helps the founders get things that matter to them, he can help the world get things that we previously couldn't get.

I wonder how anyone can think that he is not doing an incredible service, one for which he deserves to be compensated.