The first rule of private equity is that nobody mentions the 2021 vintage.

The second rule is that everyone mentions AI instead, because apparently if you say “agentic workflow” three times in a board meeting the entry multiple becomes less embarrassing.

2021 was peak nonsense.

Cheap debt.
Heroic revenue adjustments.
Software multiples written by people who had clearly been left unsupervised.
Roll-up platforms bought as if integration was a clerical task.
“Transformation plans” that somehow had no operator, no data, no tech debt budget, and no adult in the room.

Now the hangover is taking longer than the investment committee expected.

Bain put unsold PE assets at $3.8 trillion in 2025, with aging funds over 10 years old holding more than $1 trillion. Average hold periods are now closer to seven years. The old three-to-five year fairy tale is still technically available, usually in the fiction section.

The funny bit is that most 2021 deals probably don’t need another grand strategy.

They need pricing fixed.
Sales measured properly.
Marketing cleaned up.
Procurement done without pretending it is a transformation.
Management upgraded where necessary.
Data good enough to stop arguing about whose spreadsheet is lying.

Painfully boring stuff.

Also known as value creation, before the industry turned it into interpretive dance with a board deck.

The 2021 vintage will separate the firms that can actually operate from the ones that just hired operating partners because LPs like seeing the word “operating” in a pitchbook.

Do not talk about it.

But definitely mark it up another quarter.