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Matt Rooney

Summary

Matt Rooney is a co-host of Deal Sourcery alongside Dan Herr. Matt runs an executive search / recruiting practice focused exclusively on deal sourcing and business development talent in PE, and brings a distinctive labor-market lens to the podcast — comp structures, career paths, title inflation, and what differentiates top-decile BD professionals from median.

Current Affiliation

Coastal Partners — Matt runs the BD-focused recruiting practice at Coastal Partners, and is the author of the firm's annual Business Development Compensation Survey. In Ep. 11 (The Ultimate Guide to Deal Sourcing Compensation, Part 2) Matt describes the survey as "one of the most influential things for our business. As you can imagine, a recruiting business, knowing market compensation is table stakes to be an effective recruiter, both from advising firms, but also candidates. So this information is super valuable for me and my business."

Personal Bio

Hosting Style & Perspectives

Matt's contributions consistently pull the conversation toward the economic and structural side of sourcing — who gets hired, how they're paid, how roles evolve, and how firms build BD teams.

  • Deep market data on BD comp. In Ep. 3 Matt first references the Coastal Partners comp survey — "our first comp survey" — reporting that 65% of ~150 respondents had discretionary-only bonuses, 55% had some carry allocation, and sharing all-in cash ranges by seniority (junior $150–200K, mid-level $300–450K, senior $500–750K). In Ep. 11 (The Ultimate Guide to Deal Sourcing Compensation, Part 2) Matt presents the 2024 edition: roughly 259 respondents out of ~824 identified dedicated BD professionals in PE, showing an 11% year-over-year increase in both base salary and bonus from 2023 to 2024, and documenting that carried interest allocations jump sharply at the VP level (72% of VPs, 100% of MDs and partners participating have carry).

  • Title progression and structure. Matt frames BD career paths as loosely parallel to investment-team title progression (associate → senior associate → VP → director/principal → MD → partner), while noting that "there's a lot of title inflation in business development and PE" (Ep. 11 (The Ultimate Guide to Deal Sourcing Compensation, Part 2)).

  • Compensation as a structural issue for firms. Matt argues the survey exists in part because "there is a ton of different approaches to compensating business development professionals out there," and firms benefit from benchmarking data as they design roles (Ep. 11 (The Ultimate Guide to Deal Sourcing Compensation, Part 2)).

  • BD comp convergence with deal teams. In Ep. 3 Matt observes that BD professional compensation is moving toward parity with deal-team counterparts at equivalent levels: "The gap between the deal team and the BD professional is narrowing. I'm betting that that will continue to happen."

  • Recruiting-side view of sourcing talent. Matt's work placing BD professionals across PE firms gives him sustained exposure to what distinguishes successful BD hires, which he brings into conversations with guests across the show.

  • BD hiring driven by deal flow inconsistency. In Ep. 6 Matt connects the growth of dedicated BD roles directly to the feast-or-famine problem: firms hire sourcing professionals because of "the inconsistency and the desire to hire someone who's going to show up every day and focus on that."

  • Context-dependent metrics. In Ep. 6 Matt emphasizes that the right sourcing outputs to measure depend heavily on a firm's investment strategy, sourcing channels, deal volume expectations, team composition, and fund deployment cycle — the right framework is "not a one size fits all."

  • Banker–buyer power shift. In Ep. 6 Matt observes that the proliferation of PE firms has shifted power toward investment bankers: where bankers once needed buyers, the abundance of capital means bankers can now be selective, making genuine relationship-building through dedicated BD professionals essential.

Notable Quotes

"65% of the 150 or so people that participated in our survey last year were just discretionary. The other 35% had some form of success-based bonus." — Matt Rooney, Ep. 3

"The gap between the deal team and the BD professional is narrowing. I'm betting that that will continue to happen." — Matt Rooney, Ep. 3

"This is something we do annually. This is the second time we've done it. And it's probably one of the most influential things for our business. As you can imagine, a recruiting business, knowing market compensation is table stakes to be an effective recruiter." — Matt Rooney, Ep. 11

"There is a ton of different approaches to compensating business development professionals out there. And this is a resource for firms thinking about it and people evaluating those roles." — Matt Rooney, Ep. 11

"It's one of the more common reasons why people get hired into business development roles, like into dedicated sourcing roles. It's because of the inconsistency and the desire to hire someone who's going to show up every day and focus on that." — Matt Rooney, Ep. 6

Cross-References