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What if a fund had an LTV:CAC ratio? Would you raise another fund or shut it down? Private equity loves to run portfolio companies like SaaS businesses. Dashboards. Monthly metrics. Efficiency ratios. But the PE firm itself? It’s often flying blind by comparison. Let’s play this out:
Theses
Home services are a hot space in PE right now, and for good reason. Recurring demand, fragmented markets, and operational levers make them attractive. But too many firms stop at the basics: backend consolidation, procurement savings, and cost control. The real alpha is in premiumization. Transforming a commoditized service into
Value Creation
Most value creation plans start with org charts and synergy maps. But in lower mid-market PE, speed kills and nothing drives enterprise value faster than early revenue acceleration. Every portco should launch a 90-Day Revenue Lab on Day 1. What is it? A focused sprint to: • Pressure-test
Value Creation
Time to First Win In private equity, we live and die by IRR, MOIC, and LTV:CAC. But there’s one metric that rarely makes the dashboard, and yet can make or break a value creation plan: Time to First Win. It’s the speed at which a new investment
Value Creation
One of the most effective filters I use when evaluating an investment is this: Would I buy this company if I had to personally operate it for the next five years. No shortcuts, no exits, no flipping it to the next buyer, just full accountability and ownership? It’s a
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Private equity firms love to talk about operational rigor, long-term strategy, and steady hands on the wheel. But if you look at Formula 1, where decisions are made in seconds and competitive edges are measured in tenths of a second, you start to see a playbook that PE could
Theses
There’s a quiet revolution happening in home services and AI is the catalyst. Industries like HVAC, plumbing, and home cleaning are notoriously fragmented, with thousands of independent operators running subscale businesses. But while the field teams are delivering services well, what’s behind the scenes is wildly inefficient: manual
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1. Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) If you’re not measuring CAC in real time, you’re flying blind. Rising CAC is one of the earliest signs of marketing inefficiency or changing market dynamics. 2. Lifetime Value (LTV) A portfolio company’s unit economics don’t work without a healthy LTV.
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It’s easy to get lost in historicals during diligence. Revenue CAGR, EBITDA margins, year-over-year growth. All important, but only part of the story. In private equity, what really matters is this: Can this business generate the same (or better) results again, without heroic effort? That’s why
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Why Digital Due Diligence is Still 5 Years Behind the Market In an industry that prides itself on underwriting precision and repeatable value creation, it’s surprising how far behind digital due diligence still lags. Most firms treat it as a bolt-on to commercial diligence. Quick audits of SEO
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The greatest risk in private equity today isn’t macroeconomic, it’s operational opacity. The traditional PE model was built for a different era. Value came from financial engineering, multiple arbitrage, and access to proprietary deals. But that edge is eroding. In today’s environment, outperformance is operational, and operational
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The golden age of private equity financial engineering is over. With interest rates no longer near zero, valuations remaining elevated, and dry powder at record highs ($2.59 trillion globally as of 2024, per Bain & Company), the margin for error has disappeared. In this new environment, the firms that