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For two weeks after every major PE conference, LinkedIn becomes unusable in a very specific way. Panel photo. Handshake photo. Lobby photo. Dinner photo. Candid networking photo that was clearly taken with the strategic intent of a small military operation. Then the captions arrive. "Honoured to share the stage
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Same product. Same process. More exciting valuation expectations. CIMs, board decks, presentations. Everything must now be “AI powered”, “AI enabled” or “AI first”. God forbid you’re just profitable. Management needs a roadmap. The sponsor needs a portfolio story. The banker needs something sexier than “well run distribution business”. So
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Proprietary technology. Proprietary data. Proprietary processes. Then you get access. The technology is Salesforce with some custom fields. The data is a purchased contact list. The process belongs to Dave. Dave has left. Bankers love this word. The competitive advantage it implies is considerably harder to find. “We own it”
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Twenty-five books, from Barbarians at the Gate to the critics the industry would rather you skipped. What to read, and what to leave on the shelf.
Sponsored
Ask a transaction team what "efficient" looks like, and the answer usually comes back the same way: fewer steps, less manual work, more automation. That's the wrong place to stop. Removing administrative work matters mainly because of what it frees a professional to do instead. It
Life
Meta VR Glasses weigh 100 grams, cost $1,299.99 and ship in spring 2027. The display is the best Meta has built. The field of view, the empty box and the $8.6bn first-half loss are the rest of the story.
Life
New sign-ups to ChatGPT Pro $200 are paused. Existing users keep it, everyone else gets the $100 tier. A company only rations a product when the price was wrong.
News
Investors were offered 12% to hold the junior debt on 700 ageing fund stakes and still said no. The liquidity providers have discovered they need liquidity.
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Every private equity firm says talent is a competitive advantage. Then most go to the same headhunters, with the same job descriptions, to hire from the same pool of people who have already worked at the same banks, same consultants, same funds, same schools, and occasionally the same emotionally repressed
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A magical version. A temporary version. A version that lasts roughly forty-eight hours, or until Monday morning. On the panel, the firm is operationally focused. On Monday, the operating partner has missed the last three board meetings because nobody quite decided whether they were necessary, optional, or mostly decorative.
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Every conference list is a calendar. This one tells you which rooms are full of operators, which are full of the people selling to them, and which three are worth the flight.
A QoE report rebuilds EBITDA line by line and sets the price. Written for the management team and the seller who live through it, not the firm that sells it.