Spearhead is the preferred partner of some of the most seasoned private equity investors and strategic acquirers in the world.
We empower them to close more M&A deals, by supercharging their top‑of‑the‑deal‑funnel coverage and efforts worldwide.
FirePower Capital, an independent mid‑market M&A advisory and private capital firm, incubated Spearhead in early 2020, and spun it out in September 2022.
Spearhead was inspired by the outbound deal origination engine built by Spearhead’s parent, FirePower Capital. That engine has been iterated and refined since 2012.
In late 2019, FirePower Partner & COO, Sebastien Douville, a mechanical & aerospace engineer by training and an experienced M&A advisor / management consultant, believed that this engine could be retooled, as an outsourced corporate development service for serial strategic acquirers rolling up fragmented industries. It could handle, at scale, key functions that are typically under-invested in by acquirers: the market mapping, the opening of doors, the building of rapport, and the qualification of targets, in the early stages of deal-making.
Betting that one of the few seasoned acquirers in FirePower’s backyard in Toronto would find this of interest, Firepower launched its corporate development offering in January 2020. The response was swift.
Cameron Vernest joined FirePower as Head of Origination and Partnerships shortly after, bringing his experience in building and motivating outbound B2B sales and rev ops teams gained around the world with Shopify, BlackBerry and TradeGecko. He immediately saw the potential of the nascent initiative and began building. He was made Partner in February 2021.
Oren Horovitz, Director of Research and Analytics at Spearhead, helped fuel the effort from the start, contributing his expertise in machine learning and data science, analytics, and governance, gained at FirePower, PwC and other leading data consultancies.
Spearhead has since thrived in enabling massive, human-first M&A deal funnels for its clients, at the intersection of traditional M&A advisory, SaaS rev ops/lead gen/business development, and big data/ML/AI — Corporate Development as a Service (CDaaS).
Spearhead strives to create a culture that empowers a positive, humble, gritty, and courageous team. We are passionate about supporting our clients’ ambitious M&A strategies, building a new segment of investment banking, and challenging one another to become better versions of ourselves.
Each new Spearhead team member is a net contributor to our culture: we’re hiring.
We believe that talent exists globally. As such, access to opportunity should not be restricted by geography. This is why we are a hybrid organization: we invest as much in our remote-work tools and structure as we do in our bricks and mortar environments. This is to ensure that our teams have the best chance to make an impact.
We help our team members grow in the Spearhead of today, and enable them to build the Spearhead of tomorrow. We do our best to chart professional development plans for them, make learning resources available, and facilitate leadership experiences in-person and virtually. Over time, we develop a sound, consistent culture that encourages both experimentation and successful outcomes for our clients.
