Meet Piper, your Rainmaker Companion
Piper helps you decide where to hunt and how to close new revenue. She is your AI teammate for commercial thinking, client development, and business-building work across the pilot — always just an email away.
What is Piper?
A purpose-built AI teammate for commercial practice.
Piper is not a general-purpose assistant. She is designed to help you think through how to build, grow, and win client relationships. Across the pilot, Piper can help you prioritize where to focus, prepare for commercial moments, shape opportunities, and sharpen how you go to market.
Piper combines:
- Commercial expertise grounded in how partners win work
- Modern AI with memory to engage like a true companion
- Your context — your practice, relationships, and goals
How interaction works
Piper works entirely through email — no new interface to learn.
Use Piper the way you would with a commercial coach: bring a real question, add context, and iterate together.
- Email piper.ai@gunder.com with a real situation
- Keep one topic, situation, or question per thread
- Most responses arrive within one business day, although response times may vary
Piper is most useful as a source of advice you think with, not just a tool you use to generate output.
What you can ask Piper
Piper is focused on commercial work: prospecting, opportunity development, pursuits, account growth, and broader rainmaker judgment. She can support you across a set of recurring commercial moments in your practice.
Prospecting & focus
Use Piper to think through where to invest your time, which relationships to prioritize, and where the strongest commercial potential may lie.
Opportunity development
Ask Piper to help you interpret what may be happening inside a relationship and how to shape the next commercial move.
Pursuits & pitches
Prepare for important meetings, pressure-test your approach, and refine how you make the ask.
Account growth
Map an account, identify where you are under-leveraged, and explore how to expand the relationship over time.
On roadmap — coming in 2027
Partners will be able to work with Piper to optimize pricing for profitability and client lifetime value of the relationship. During the pilot, Lumio will compile any pricing questions and provide guidance at the session.
Some good example questions for Piper
- 1
"I'm going to TechCon SoCal next month. What are some less obvious meetings I should prioritize for coffee meetings, and what are some ways to approach each one?"
- 2
"I have a pitch meeting with a prospective new fund client on Thursday. Can you help me pressure-test my positioning and think through the objections I'm likely to get?"
- 3
"I had an engaging first meeting last week with the new GC at a portfolio company, and I need a follow-up that stands out in their inbox. What should my next step be?"
- 4
"There's a fund I've been trying to get in front of, and I learned that my friend used to work with one of their GPs at a prior fund. How should they introduce me to maximize the chances of a meeting?"
- 5
"I've been writing about changes in the VC secondaries market and pre-IPO patterns. How can I best use this to create conversations with the clients I want to reach?"
- 6
"I'm in a competitive pitch situation against two other firms. The client knows all of us and already uses one of the other ones. How do I differentiate in a way that matters to them?"
- 7
"I have a takeaway opportunity but I think it will take a lot of price flexibility to get the work. I want to win this, but don't want to set a bad precedent in the relationship."
- 8
"I recently closed deals for a client that would make a great referral source for the type of work I want to grow. How do I best help them refer work to me?"
Best practices
A few ways to get more value from Piper during the pilot.
✓ Do
- Bring real client, relationship, and pursuit questions
- Give context about the situation and what you are trying to achieve
- Be totally natural and candid, as you would with a commercial coach who knows you well
- Keep one topic or question per email thread
- Push Piper's thinking with follow-up questions
- Forward emails when helpful — but tell Piper what you want, and treat it as a new conversation
- Use Piper between workshops to maintain momentum
✗ Don't
- Use Piper for legal drafting or matter work product
- Include information regarding Restricted Clients of the firm
- Assume Piper has full context without you providing it
- Expect the first response to be the final answer
- Mix several unrelated asks into one thread