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’
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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.
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But it is going to make large chunks of the industry look embarrassingly outdated.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.
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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
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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
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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
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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
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I’d start with the people who actually do the work: - Operators buried in integration plans - Founders trying to scale without getting fired - Growth-stage CEOs caught between board slides and bank covenants - The associate who just got asked to “benchmark CAC across the portfolio” by 9am tomorrow PE isn’
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There’s a whole ecosystem now built on one promise: “You can buy a business with no money down and become financially free in 12 months.” It sounds like M&A. It looks like private equity. But it behaves like a multi-level marketing scheme. Because here’s what’
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No “proprietary IP” nonsense. Just out in the open for anyone to use. Why? Because in 2025, opacity isn’t a competitive advantage, it’s a liability. Most funds still act like their diligence framework is the nuclear codes. The truth? Everyone’s using the same ingredients: hire a CRO,