Wellington Management's Michael Carmen describes due diligence discipline and dealing with compressed deal timelines during the peak 2020-2021 venture market.
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“It's amazing the number of deals that we had to pass on in 20, 21, because we get into the data room, and the company would say, like, hey, listen, we want term sheets by Thursday, and it was Monday. Well, we don't work that way. And so we're just going to have to miss that deal.”
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Disclosure
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AssertionSupported
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