Most firms are built on models and processes. The best firms are built on rainmakers.

Most firms treat rainmakers like anomalies. The ones that last treat them like a strategy.

Why? Because rainmakers aren’t just talented individuals, they create leverage.
• A great fundraiser doesn’t just bring in capital once. They create durable LP relationships that fund multiple vintages.
• A sourcing MD doesn’t just win a single deal. They build networks that keep deals flowing for a decade.
• A portfolio operator who can “open doors” doesn’t just land one contract. They make the company credible with every customer in the sector.

This is why firms like Apollo and Silver Lake doubled down on rainmakers. They institutionalised what everyone else treated as a one-off. It became part of the model.

And it’s not just private equity.
Look at Alvarez & Marsal. The turnaround firm has always been powered by heavy-hitting rainmakers. They built the business around a reputation that could get CEOs and boards to pick up the phone when the house was on fire. It’s not about their brand or processes alone. It’s about having the people who can make the call happen.

Or McKinsey’s global practices. Their rise wasn’t just analytical brilliance, it was the partners who could land CEOs, ministers, and heads of state as clients.

Even in investment banking, the “star rainmakers” routinely pull in more fees than entire mid-market competitors. Goldman and Morgan Stanley protect those people for a reason........the whole franchise leans on them.

You can spend years building “culture” and “capability.” But if you treat rainmaking as an actual strategy.........recruiting, protecting, and overpaying the people who can make it rain, you create compounding advantage.

Private equity is an outlier business. Outliers win. And outliers are almost always rainmakers.