Most private equity value creation plans are not designed to be executed. They are designed to win an investment committee.
That is not a moral failing. It is a structural feature of how deals get bu...
The CEO who succeeds in a private equity owned mid-market business is a specific archetype. She is distinct from the founder who built the business from scratch. She is distinct from the corporate exe...
A landscaping company in the southeast came up at an investment committee three years ago. Standard mid-market deal. Twelve trucks, a hundred and twenty customers, mostly residential, some light comme...
December and January in mid-market portfolio companies follow a recognizable rhythm. The annual operating plan from the prior year is reviewed against actuals. Performance is assessed. Bonus pools are...
Every board meeting in 2026 contains the same scene. The chair turns to the CEO and asks the question that has now become ritual. What is your AI strategy? The CEO produces a slide. There is a vendor ...
Private equity is not learned by memorizing formulas alone.
You can pass an LBO test, understand valuation mechanics, and still feel unprepared the first time you are asked to defend a thesis in an i...
___
Talk to any operating partner who has been in private equity for more than ten years and ask about CEO hires. The conversation will produce a list of mistakes. Almost every senior practitioner ha...
The Monday partner meeting is, in most established private equity firms, a fixed feature of the operating week. It runs for two to four hours. It assembles the senior partners in a conference room or,...
Private equity is not learned by memorizing formulas alone.
You can pass an LBO test, understand valuation mechanics, and still feel unprepared the first time you are asked to defend a thesis in an i...
The most overused word in private equity portfolio company communication in 2026 is transformation. Every portfolio company is undergoing one. Every CEO is leading one. Every board pack opens with pro...
The 2001 recession produced a piece of research that should be required reading for every operating partner in private equity, and yet most have either forgotten it or never engaged with it carefully....
For the past three years, the consensus across private equity has been that multiple arbitrage is finished. The cycle of buying small platforms cheaply, rolling up adjacent businesses, and selling the...
Most mid-market portfolio companies have invested meaningfully in their brand. They have refreshed their websites, modernized their visual identity, hired marketing leadership, built content engines, ...
The clearest signal of where a private equity firm sits on the operating partner question is not on the website. It is in the carry distribution. Firms that allocate carry to operating partners on par...
The diagnostic shows up the same way across deals. Six months after close, the operating partner and the deal team are working off subtly different plans. The deal team is still anchored to the thesis...
