Founding a market entry into a contested critical-minerals basin.
Built the origination engine and commercial team for a mid-cap operator entering a jurisdiction with no incumbent relationships.
The client had capital and a technical thesis but no local counterparty relationships, no ministry relationships and no view on which junior partners were credible. Time-to-first-deal was the binding constraint.
Three moves.
Built the map
Six-week landscape mapping the top forty prospective counterparties, ranked by asset quality, jurisdictional posture and willingness to transact.
Founder-led origination
Ran the first eighteen introductions personally. Handed off the twelve that mattered to a permanent commercial hire we recruited into the client.
Built the internal function
Designed the commercial team structure, hired the country lead, and stayed on as fractional commercial director through the first close.
Four assets under signed LOI within twelve months. First close eighteen months from engagement start. A permanent in-country commercial function running the pipeline independently.
"You don't buy a portfolio in a new basin. You build the machine that acquires it."