Events
The Not Very Private Equity Dinner Series brings together a curated mix of private equity investors, operating partners, and founders for candid, off-the-record conversations. Hosted monthly in New York and Los Angeles, these dinners take place in some of the cities’ most exclusive private dining rooms and members
Life
Freeze the lemon and shove it as far back up life as you can. Elbow deep. Because in business, you don’t win by coping, you win by counterattacking. Most people have been trained to absorb problems politely. They call it “resilience.” They think if they just keep calm, manage
Views
You’ve been there. You just walked into the best party in Vegas. Perfect music, open bar, crowd full of people who all look like they’ve made it. The room hums with self-importance .........everyone telling each other how great things are. You feel it too. You’ve made
Theses
One of the most underutilised value creation strategies in PE right now. Buy the education platform. Buy the service companies. Place the grads. Repeat. Think about it: if you’re investing in HVAC, plumbing, electrical, auto repair....any business reliant on skilled labour.....then you already know the bottleneck isn’
Views
The problem is no one updates the plan. A deal gets signed. The spreadsheet gets built. Revenue projections go up and to the right. EBITDA margin magically improves by year three. And everyone agrees to it because, well, it has to pencil. But here’s the issue: Six months in,
Value Creation
Chasing looks like hustle. But it’s often panic in disguise. Attracting looks like patience. But it’s really clarity, consistency, and control. In private equity, most firms still chase. They chase deals, LPs, and talent. They run endless outbound cycles, react to auctions, and pitch the same tired “value
Events
On October 16th, Not Very Private Equity hosted an invite-only dinner at Chez Margeaux Members Club in New York. The evening brought together 10 senior private equity executives for an off-the-record discussion on the state of dealmaking, portfolio operations, and the realities of value creation in 2025.
Views
But it is going to make large chunks of the industry look embarrassingly outdated. • Deal Sourcing: The average associate spends ~60% of their time sifting through teasers, scraping LinkedIn, and chasing bankers. An AI-driven sourcing engine can screen tens of thousands of businesses against an investment thesis in minutes.
Views
It sounds clever: neat pieces, predictable moves, a brilliant strategist “seeing 10 moves ahead.” But the problem is, chess is finite. You win, lose, or draw. Outcomes are immediate and visible. Once the king falls, it’s game over. That’s not business. Business is Go. In chess, the board
Views
But who are we actually serving? LPs, obviously. They give us the money. But portcos… they make us the money. So here’s the uncomfortable truth most GPs won’t say out loud: PE firms treat LPs like customers. But treat portcos like cost centers. You pitch the LPs. You
Views
Plenty think they have. They’ll show you their org charts, explain how value creation is now a “core capability,” and proudly announce that every portfolio company has a VCP tracked in Asana. But scratch the surface, and what you find is usually a muddled mix of consulting theatre, internal
Views
Not because the people aren’t smart. Not because they don’t want to help. But because they’ve been designed to observe, not build. Most boards in private equity aren’t boards. They’re quarterly compliance checks with catered sandwiches. You get the same format every time: - 100-page