Proprietary deal flow is the most claimed and least evidenced quality in private equity. Nearly every fund describes its flow as proprietary, and the word is used to mean anything from a genuinely unbanked approach to being called early by a banker who called four other people the same morning. The distinction is worth money and it becomes visible with one field. This page defines it and says how to measure it.
The definition that survives contact with a process
Proprietary means nobody else was asked. Not early access, not a warm introduction, not a friendly relationship with the seller's adviser. If a process exists and other parties are in it, the deal is intermediated, and calling it proprietary because you heard first is a claim about timing rather than about competition.
Measure it at entry or not at all
Two months into a live deal nobody remembers accurately how it arrived, and the retrospective answer flatters. One dropdown when the opportunity is created, with three or four options, is the whole method, and it is the highest-return field in the record because everything downstream depends on it.
Expect the number to be smaller than the claim
Funds that hold the line find their genuinely proprietary share is well below what the pitch deck says. That is a useful discovery rather than a discouraging one: a real number can be grown deliberately, and a claim cannot, because nobody can tell whether it moved.
What proprietary is actually worth
Less competition on price, more time to diligence properly, and a seller who is talking to you rather than to a process. Whether that is worth the three years of sector work it takes to produce is a question a fund can only answer with the measurement in hand.
Questions people ask about proprietary deal flow
What counts as proprietary deal flow?
Nobody else was asked. Early access to a live process is intermediated, however good the relationship that produced it.
How is it measured?
One dropdown recorded when the opportunity is created. Retrospective answers are systematically flattering.
Why does the distinction matter?
Proprietary and intermediated deals convert differently and command different terms, so a blended rate describes neither.