Eliminating the Trenches: Sagar Soni’s Journey from Deal Maker to Automating Deal Making

I had the pleasure of interviewing Sagar Soni, the visionary behind X Cap Market. Raised in a family of entrepreneurs spanning both India and the United States, Sagar’s upbringing instilled in him a deep appreciation for the value of ultimate ownership, hard work, and persistence. Despite his affinity for business, he pursued a degree in mechanical engineering at Georgia Tech to pursue his other passion — understanding how the world is engineered. This took him to SpaceX, and it was during his tenure at SpaceX, where he witnessed firsthand the true weight of responsibility and the art of leadership, that reignited Sagar’s entrepreneurial spirit. Fueled by this experience, he embarked on a journey to deepen his understanding of finance through an MBA, driven by a curiosity to uncover the inner workings of investment banking, leading him to J.P. Morgan (JPM), where he honed his skills and gained invaluable insights into the world of high finance.

What motivated you to launch your startup?

While I was at JPM, I loved going to client meetings where we pitched our ideas on acquisitions, potential carve-outs, or debt and equity transactions. However, that was only 10% — 20% of the job for an associate like me. My MDs were on those calls all the time, and I wanted to be like them. I wanted to spend most of my time on calls with clients selling business. Realizing that I wasn’t the only one in the bank who wanted to pivot out of the trenches into the revenue generation side, I decided to start looking into workflow automation for investment banks. I’ve never seen a Google search as barren as the search for “investment banking workflow automation.” The lack of automated tools is what drove me to solve the problem.

What is it that excites you about what you’re building?

I believe that due to the limited amount of time a senior banker has and the number of mundane tasks that junior team members do, the non-priority client can be forgotten. By automating the research that goes into IB pitch decks and creating them faster, we free up time for bankers to just focus on their clients — learning their strategy, needs, and wants and ultimately providing a more bespoke service to the clients.

What has been your biggest challenge when growing your startup?

Our biggest challenges can be classified into two buckets: human capital and data. We are on the hunt for strong technical and sales team members who can help accelerate our growth. While we are on the hunt for the 10x engineer or 10x salesperson, for the readers who are interested in joining us, our hiring process indexes highly for passion, and we can teach you the skills. The other challenge in financial services is access to quality data, which is usually guarded behind paywalls costing tens of thousands. Access to quality data allows us to make sure the LLMs are not hallucinating.

What are your future plans for your startup?

We are launching our pitch deck and simple CIM product. In the future, we want to be the go-to tool for any finance professional in the industry if they want to analyze a company, a debt offering, or conduct M&A.

How can our readers follow you on social media?

• Personal LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sagarsoni1918/
• Company LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/97443582

This was very insightful. Thank you so much for joining us!