Ian Faler

With years of experience in acquisitions and business planning, I excel at driving strategic growth through identifying and integrating high-potential businesses. At eAcquisition, I lead acquisitions across the U.S., with a focus on founder-led businesses seeking seamless transitions. My work ensures that legacies are honored, staff are retained, and quality care standards are maintained.  

My expertise in business analysis and management consulting supports the development of tailored strategies to secure successful acquisitions. I am committed to fostering trusted partnerships, enhancing operational efficiencies, and delivering value while facilitating smooth transitions for business owners and their teams.

Founder

We are a leading acquisition service working with our exclusive partners to build out a portfolio of successful businesses.

I'm the Founder & CEO of Finalis®, a software platform reimagining how deals get done in the private markets.

We started by solving a big pain point in the industry: regulatory compliance.  Today, Finalis powers a growing network of independent investment bankers, helping them navigate licensing and oversight, streamline deal execution, and unlock new opportunities through automation and AI.  With hundreds of bankers and billions in transactions, Finalis is becoming the system of record for private market deals.

Before Finalis, I worked as an M&A attorney at Kirkland & Ellis LLP, managing deals for leading private equity firms and corporate clients.  I also supported cross-border investments at a London-based private equity firm, with a focus on Europe and Australia.

Beyond Finalis, I'm passionate about supporting ventures that create impact.  I'm involved with the World Identity Network (launched in collaboration with Sir Richard Branson), which uses blockchain to provide digital IDs for vulnerable communities.  I've also worked on refugee initiatives with Human Rights Watch, Chobani’s Tent Foundation, and the National Immigration Forum.

I previously taught corporate law and regulation at Hult International Business School.  As an Argentine-American, I'm deeply committed to helping entrepreneurs across Latin America scale and raise capital globally.  I'm a Limited Partner with Alaya Capital, one of Argentina’s leading venture firms.

🎙️ I also host Pencils Down, Finalis' podcast — https://www.finalis.com/podcast

Federico Baradello

No matter who buys Warner Bros, JPMorgan and Allen & Co walk away with $180M. 
This is a use case in what separates transactional advisors from true dealmakers.

JPMorgan didn’t just advise Warner Bros.
It:
• Designed a two-step separation of the business
• Provided a $17.5B bridge loan (the largest non-investment-grade bridge ever) 
• Ran bond buybacks to reduce leverage ahead of a sale
• Delivered multiple fairness opinions over a multi-year process

Advisory was only one slice of the economics.

The real value came from staying close to the client, solving problems before the transaction existed, and being willing to engage across structure, financing, and process.
That lesson isn’t limited to bulge brackets.

For independent and boutique bankers, the takeaway isn’t “have a bigger balance sheet.” 
It's to expand the surface area of how you create value:
• Earlier involvement
• Deeper structuring insight
• Clear ownership of complexity
• Trust built over time, not just at signing

The deals that generate the most value are rarely just about selling an asset. They’re about helping a client navigate everything that has to happen before the sale is even possible.

Where do you see the biggest opportunity to create value beyond advisory on today’s deals?

Founder & CEO at Finalis | Powering Dealmakers®

AI isn’t just changing how deals get done. 
It’s changing who gets to do them.

In our Real Impact of AI on Dealmaking webinar, Shawn Flynn, Finalis member and founder of SVH Capital, shared how AI is reshaping deal teams.

When you pair deep industry expertise with AI that supports execution, you don’t replace bankers.
You unlock talent that used to sit outside the traditional IB mold.

For lean teams, that’s real leverage.
More insight.
Faster ramp.
Better coverage.

👉 Does AI change who you’d hire onto a deal team today?

AI won’t create a divide between humans and machines.
It’ll widen the gap between experienced and inexperienced humans using AI.

AI is already good at producing answers.
What it can’t do is know which ones matter.

That changes the future of work in dealmaking.

If junior work is automated, experience won’t come from grinding through spreadsheets anymore.
It’ll have to come from earlier exposure to judgment, context, and real decision-making.

AI can accelerate prep and analysis.
But forming great dealmakers will still require reps, mentorship, and time spent on the parts of the job that can’t be automated.

The playing field isn’t getting flatter.
It’s getting steeper.

👉 How do you think we should be training the next generation of dealmakers in an AI-first world?

Goldman and Morgan Stanley just posted record years, but it wasn't confidence that drove deals. 
It was something else.

In 2025, M&A volume reached the second-highest level on record. Debt underwriting activity surpassed its previous high. 
And acquisition loans hit new records, helped by a handful of megadeals.

Deals didn't move because CEOs suddenly felt optimistic. 
They moved because capital was available, flexible, and willing to underwrite risk again.

Large acquisitions don't close on valuation alone. 
Private equity doesn't transact without leverage. 
AI-driven capex and infrastructure don't scale without long-dated financing.

When balance sheets open up, advisory activity follows. 
When they don't, even strong strategic ideas stall.

👉 Do you see financing staying this supportive into 2026?

Two forces have shaped every great career in dealmaking.
Neither is talent. Neither is luck.

1) Mirrored reciprocation.
What you give is what you get back.
Go positive first, you get positive back.
Go transactional, you get transactional back.

2) Compound interest.
Einstein called it the most powerful force in the universe.
Applied to relationships, it’s constant progress over a long time frame.
That’s how the best bankers actually build durable practices.

The problem?
Most people are intermittent.
They show up when they need something and disappear when they don’t.
That breaks the compounding.

Here’s where AI changes things.

AI is taking over research, analysis, and repetitive work that used to consume most of a banker’s time.

That’s not just an efficiency gain.
It’s a relationship gain.

More time to be constant.
To check in when you don’t need anything.
To compound trust, not just transactions.

AI won’t replace the human side of dealmaking.
But it might finally give bankers the space to do it right.

What are you choosing to compound with the time AI gives back?

JPMorgan just replaced all proxy advisory firms with one internal AI platform.


Its asset management unit cut ties with external proxy advisors and moved proxy voting and analysis in-house using AI.

One system now analyzes data from more than 3,000 annual company meetings, work that used to sit across multiple third-party firms. 

Jamie Dimon has been vocal about his views on proxy advisors, but the bigger signal here isn’t the rhetoric. 
It’s the operating model.

AI is collapsing the distance between data, analysis, and decision-making.

When that gap closes, outsourcing starts to look slower, more expensive, and strategically limiting.

This won’t stop at proxy voting.
Valuation benchmarks.
Research providers.
Due diligence workflows.

Anywhere the output feeds directly into a high-stakes decision becomes a candidate for internalization.

For investment bankers, that raises a sharper question:
Which capabilities still differentiate, and which are quietly becoming table stakes?

Government funding and private capital used to live in separate worlds.
That line is disappearing.

Across energy, defense, AI, semiconductors, and critical infrastructure, companies are combining government funding with private capital in new ways.

The result is a new capital stack.
And many founders, bankers, and investors aren’t yet equipped to navigate it.

That’s what we’ll unpack in an upcoming conversation with Stephen Empedocles, CEO of Finalis member firm Clark Street Associates, and John M. McHugh, former U.S. Secretary of the Army and longtime Congressman, as we explore how public capital and private markets are converging and what it means for capital raising, M&A, and long-term strategy.

If you advise companies in capital-intensive or regulated sectors, this shift is becoming impossible to ignore.

Hope you’ll join us, I’ll drop the registration link in the comments.

One thing I’ve learned as a founder is that the best investors don’t just show up for one round.
They show up over time.

Ulu Ventures invested in Finalis out of two different funds, years apart. That didn’t happen by accident. It came from trust built through real partnership, not just performance snapshots.

Seed-stage investing is ultimately about relationships, and this video captures that well.

Looking forward to continuing to grow together Miriam Rivera.

CEO, Co-Founder and Managing Director Ulu Ventures

Seed-stage investing is about more than capital; it’s fundamentally relationship-driven. Developing long-lasting relationships with founders makes a meaningful difference—something we call the Ulu Difference. Ulu Ventures spoke with several founders about how they view the support Ulu provides to help strengthen and accelerate their startups. In our first video interviews we spoke with Jonas Bordo, co-founder and CEO of Dwellsy; Marisa Repka, co-founder of @Cambium ; and Federico Baradello, founder and CEO of Finalis. Enjoy!
https://lnkd.in/gQcauhvs

Open video: The Ulu Ventures Difference on vimeo.com

The most important part of Alphabet’s $4.75B acquisition of Intersect isn’t the price.
It’s what it says about their corporate strategy.

As AI workloads scale, the constraint isn’t models or chips.
It's the energy that powers them.

This deal gives Alphabet access to clean energy and data center projects already in motion, spanning utility-scale generation, storage, and co-located infrastructure. Intersect has roughly $15B of assets operating or under construction, with projects representing about 10.8 GW expected to be online or in development by 2028.

That’s capacity being secured years in advance, not optionality waiting on permits.

This is how AI reshapes strategy once execution becomes the limiting factor.
Capital flows toward assets that are slow to build, difficult to replicate, and critical to long-term control.

In 2025, data-center related M&A, asset sales, and equity investments reached roughly $61B across more than 100 transactions. Even as rates and valuations moved, capital stayed focused on physical capacity.

👉 What other parts of the AI stack do you think companies will start locking up next?

AI is quietly changing the economics of work.


Historically, human labor was something companies consumed to produce output.
In an automated economy, that same work also produces learning signals.

Every decision, correction, exception, and tradeoff has value beyond the task itself.
It helps train systems that automate the next iteration of the work.

That reframes how we should think about processes that used to feel like overhead:
documentation, review, compliance, and recordkeeping.

When done well, they’re not friction.
They’re how expertise compounds.

This is especially true in fields like investment banking, where judgment and nuance matter more than rote execution. The more structured that judgment is, the more leverage it creates over time.

In other words, human work doesn’t lose value as AI scales.
It becomes a first-class economic input.

👉 What judgments in dealmaking are still hardest to capture or systematize?

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