Value Creation
One of the most effective filters I use when evaluating an investment is this: Would I buy this company if I had to personally operate it for the next five years. No shortcuts, no exits, no flipping it to the next buyer, just full accountability and ownership? It’s a
Theses
There’s a quiet revolution happening in home services and AI is the catalyst. Industries like HVAC, plumbing, and home cleaning are notoriously fragmented, with thousands of independent operators running subscale businesses. But while the field teams are delivering services well, what’s behind the scenes is wildly inefficient: manual
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1. Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) If you’re not measuring CAC in real time, you’re flying blind. Rising CAC is one of the earliest signs of marketing inefficiency or changing market dynamics. 2. Lifetime Value (LTV) A portfolio company’s unit economics don’t work without a healthy LTV.
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Why Digital Due Diligence is Still 5 Years Behind the Market In an industry that prides itself on underwriting precision and repeatable value creation, it’s surprising how far behind digital due diligence still lags. Most firms treat it as a bolt-on to commercial diligence. Quick audits of SEO
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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 The traditional model, raise a fund, source deals, optimize EBITDA, exit in 5 years, feels increasingly outdated.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
Events
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
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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.