Timi Barabas
Timi Barabas

Private equity has long operated behind fortress-like walls of intermediaries, gatekeepers, and protocols that add months to transactions and millions to costs. Then came activist and entrepreneur Timi Barabas, whose journey from non-English speaker to dealmaking innovator represents a fundamental challenge to this entrenched system.

As senior partner and program director at Impact Ventures International (IVI), Barabas has revolutionized capital access by drastically reducing deal timelines and redefining possibilities in a traditionally rigid industry.

"Most firms would take six months to make introductions happen. I just saved everyone half a year of their lives," affirms Timi Barabas. Her outlook connects investors directly with off-market investment opportunities, bypassing the lengthy process private equity investors face when sourcing deals.

From Budapest Markets to Billion-Dollar Deals

Timi Barabas' journey to becoming one of private equity's most innovative connectors began half a world away in Budapest, Hungary. At age 15, she immigrated to New Zealand without speaking English.

Where many would see insurmountable barriers, Barabas saw only problems to solve. Within two years of arrival, despite still developing her English skills, she launched her first formal business—a caregiving and cleaning service that acquired 25 long-term clients in its first two months of operation.

This pattern of turning obstacles into opportunities became her signature. By her early twenties, she had co-founded multiple businesses spanning technology, caregiving, and event management while building an extensive portfolio of non-profit work addressing causes from climate change to peace diplomacy.

In 2023, she represented New Zealand at the APEC Multistakeholder Forum in San Francisco, one of only three delegates under 30 selected for this honor. Her cross-cultural fluency and growing reputation for connecting disparate worlds earned her the selection—a skill she soon applied to revolutionize private equity transactions.

The Gatekeeper Problem

To understand Barabas's work at IVI, one must first understand the problem she's solving. An elaborate, multi-layered system—comprising investment bankers, business brokers, consultants, and lawyers—typically governs traditional private equity deals. Each layer adds time, cost, and complexity.

In the U.S. alone, the average mid-market business acquisition takes 9-12 months from initial contact to closing, with typical transaction costs often exceeding 10% of deal value. This can be a significant struggle for businesses of any size as it means thousands to millions in fees, even before launching.

Moreover, this traditional system creates information asymmetry. When most deals reach potential buyers, they've been widely shopped, driving up prices and reducing potential returns.

"Most investors are stuck looking at the same deals as everyone else," Barabas explains. "They waste time, money, and energy chasing opportunities already overpriced or oversaturated."

Direct Access: The Barabas Method

When Barabas joined Impact Ventures International in 2024, she brought a radically different perspective to deal-making. By early 2025, she had become Senior Partner of IVI and Program Director of VentureMax360, the firm's flagship program for scaling and selling mid-market companies.

Her method centers on what she calls "direct market access." It connects business owners with IVI's VentureMax360 program, which focuses on growing and scaling a business to prepare for selling within a two+ year timeline. Then, Barabas connects them with potential partners and investors to create a smooth and efficient transition. This process eliminates the need to shop deals around for months and reduces delays in decision-making, thus making it easy for investors to buy functional businesses in a timely manner.

"Most private equity professionals wait for deals to surface—I create them," Barabas mentions. "Traditional firms navigate layers of brokers and gatekeepers—I eliminate those delays by providing direct access to decision-makers."

Her technique leverages a global relationship network that spans five continents, carefully cultivated through years of cross-cultural business development. This extensive network allows her to identify opportunities long before they become visible to traditional market participants.

IVI's technology integrates CEPA-certified exit planning, VM360's scaling strategies, and IVSS Digital Office automation to identify high-potential businesses before they hit the market.

What sets Barabas' method apart is her relentless focus and emphasis on speed-based execution. She acts quickly when a potential match is found, arranging discussions within days. Using AI, automation, and direct market access, she accelerates transactions far beyond traditional private equity timelines.

The results speak for themselves. Barabas has worked with dozens of high-value private equity clients in the past two years, supporting private equity deal flow and client strategies in the 8-9 figure range.

The Global Expansion

What makes Barabas' slant particularly powerful is its global reach. While traditional private equity remains siloed mainly by geography, IVI's direct access model operates across borders. The company maintains active deal flow across Singapore, Malaysia, Africa, Canada, and the U.S., with plans to expand into Monaco and the U.K. within 12 months.

"Private equity professionals often create artificial geographical barriers," Barabas says. "Capital doesn't recognize borders, and neither should deal-making."

This global outlook provides another competitive advantage: cultural translation. Having navigated her own cross-cultural journey, Barabas has developed an unusual facility for bridging communication gaps that often derail international deals.

The Dealmaker's Future

Her direct-access model democratizes opportunity by preserving proficiency while removing unnecessary barriers in a gatekeeper-driven global economy. For Barabas, the direct-access model represents only the beginning of a more significant transformation in how capital connects with opportunity globally.

Barabas' long-term vision is to scale IVI's method into "a global force for private equity matchmaking" and make way for private equity's potential future: faster, more direct, and oriented around relationships rather than institutions.

"How long would it take you to get a meeting with the owner of a multi-million-dollar company willing to sell? Months? Years? Never?" she asks. "At IVI, I make those connections happen quickly and efficiently, certifying that our clients get first access to the highest-value deals—before they ever go public."

The young woman who could not speak English upon arriving in New Zealand has built her career by breaking down walls between investors, entrepreneurs, and opportunities. In doing so, she's demonstrating that sometimes, the most valuable innovation is not a technology or product but a reimagining of how we connect.

Private equity has always been about connecting capital with opportunity. With Impact Ventures International, Timi Barabas is turning outdated systems on their head—empowering investors with direct access and entrepreneurs with real outcomes.