Zarna

What do they actually do

Zarna is building AI “associates” for private equity and private capital teams. In its current private beta, Zarna connects to a firm’s existing documents and systems (e.g., CIMs, deal folders, CRMs) and generates common deal outputs that junior team members produce—such as tearing down CIMs, updating LBO models, drafting IC memos/tear sheets, and writing back notes to the CRM (Zarna site platform page YC listing).

The typical workflow is: connect firm data, let Zarna’s agents ingest and organize deal context, then review AI‑produced artifacts (tear sheets, model updates, IC memo drafts, and CRM updates) inside a centralized deal workspace. The product is demo/early‑access only today; no public pricing or named customers are listed (Zarna site platform page).

Who are their target customer(s)

• Small private equity and search funds: Lean teams process many deals and lack associate bandwidth. Time goes to reading CIMs, maintaining LBOs, and drafting memos instead of sourcing or negotiating (Zarna site YC listing).
• Mid‑market PE firms with multiple deal streams and legacy data stores: Deal context, models, and CRM entries get fragmented across people and drives, slowing decisions and creating rework (Zarna site).
• Deal associates / junior analysts: Daily work is dominated by repetitive execution—document review, LBO builds/updates, IC memo drafting, and CRM logging—leaving little time for deeper diligence (YC listing).
• Portfolio operations / finance teams: Monitoring holdings requires manual consolidation of reports, model updates, and alerting on changes, making oversight costly and error‑prone (Zarna site).
• Firm IT/security/compliance evaluators: Any AI tool must integrate securely, enforce access controls, and provide auditability of AI‑generated outputs before use in investment decisions (Zarna site).

How would they acquire their first 10, 50, and 100 customers

• First 10: Run hands‑on, paid or discounted pilots with small PE/search funds via founder networks, doing white‑glove onboarding to map agents to each firm’s CIM/LBO/CRM templates and measuring time‑saved and accuracy for case studies (Zarna site YC listing).
• First 50: Convert pilots into a repeatable motion using referenceable case studies and a standardized onboarding playbook (templates for LBOs, IC memos, CRM mappings), then targeted outbound to similar firms with fixed pilot scope and success KPIs.
• First 100: Scale through partners and compliance: publish off‑the‑shelf connectors and guides, sign channel deals with CRMs/data‑rooms and portfolio‑ops consultancies, and ship security/compliance artifacts to shorten procurement cycles at larger firms.

What is the rough total addressable market

Top-down context:

Private equity remains a large, resilient market with multi‑trillion AUM and a sizable footprint of PE‑backed companies globally, indicating broad demand for deal execution tooling (McKinsey Global Private Markets 2025 EY PE Pulse). US PE AUM alone was reported at about $3.1T in 2024, underscoring the scale of spend in the category (S&P Global MI).

Bottom-up calculation:

Initial TAM focused on small‑to‑mid PE/private capital firms in North America and Europe: assume ~3,000 target firms with average annual license of ~$75k for agent workflows (modeling, memo drafting, CRM writebacks) = ~$225M TAM. Expanding to broader private capital and additional geographies would increase this figure.

Assumptions:

• Targets small‑to‑mid firms likely to adopt first; excludes mega‑funds in initial TAM.
• Average contract value approximates a firm license covering several investment users and portfolio monitoring agents.
• Pricing and buyer count are estimates; actuals depend on integration depth, compliance, and seat/usage tiers.

Who are some of their notable competitors

• Intapp DealCloud: Enterprise deal/CRM platform for private capital that centralizes pipelines, relationships, and workflow. Overlaps on centralized deal workspace and some automation but is positioned as CRM/process software, not autonomous “associates” generating LBOs or IC memos.
• DealRoom: Virtual data room and M&A project management tool for diligence tracking and document collaboration. Competes on organizing deal docs/tasks; does not focus on generating models, memos, or CRM writebacks.
• Kira Systems (Litera): Contract and document analysis for legal diligence (clause extraction, structuring). Overlaps on automated parsing but oriented to legal workflows rather than end‑to‑end PE execution.
• Luminance: AI document review for legal/compliance teams (clause/anomaly detection, PII). Competes on ingestion/review but not on automating LBO updates or IC memo drafting for deal teams.
• AlphaSense: Market intelligence and research synthesis platform with agent‑style research workflows. Strong on external research; less focused on deep integration with firm CRMs and automating PE model/memo outputs.