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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
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If I were building a PE firm from scratch today, I wouldn’t start with capital, I’d start with the platform. The traditional model, raise a fund, source deals, optimize EBITDA, exit in 5 years, feels increasingly outdated. With elevated entry multiples and a higher cost of capital, financial
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On September 25th, Not Very Private Equity hosted an invite-only dinner at Beef Bar 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. The event was sponsored by
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We talk about “synergies.” We talk about “platform plays.” We talk about “digital transformation.” We talk about “growth at scale.” But the scoreboard hasn’t changed in 40 years: enterprise value is a direct function of EBITDA. Most of the legendary PE exits weren’t built on wild revenue growth.