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Most operating partners fail because the firm set them up to fail.
Carlyle is a useful reminder that most private equity firms are still private equity firms.
Partners Group just built a product for the exit market nobody trusts.
KKR’s insurance strategy looks boring on purpose.
What happens to private equity in a "Carry Winter"?
Apollo is no longer just an alternative asset manager.
Private equity does not have a zombie fund problem. It has a hostage fund problem.
Blackstone’s best private equity deal may have been escaping private equity.
The board story on revenue is usually fiction with formatting.
The Five Operating Philosophies of Private Equity: A 2026 Taxonomy
Private equity is not one operating philosophy but several. A neutral field guide to the five you will actually encounter, what each believes, who runs it, and when it works.
Operating Partner vs Fractional Executive Firm: How PE-Backed Companies Choose Between Embedded and On-Demand Leadership
Operating partners embed inside a single leadership team. Fractional executive firms deploy a roster across many. Here is when each one wins.
Theses
3x Thesis: The Trade School Flywheel
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’
Theses
3x Thesis: The Great American Garage Conversion Play
America’s housing crisis isn’t creeping up on us. It’s already here and the math doesn’t work. Home prices are up 40% in four years. Mortgage rates have doubled. And nearly half of renters now spend over 30% of their income on housing. Meanwhile, the country is
Theses
3x Thesis: The Divorce Industrial Complex Needs a Digital Exit
Most people still treat divorce like a one-off legal event. But it’s not. It’s an industry. A massive one. And it’s ripe for a platform play. $50B+ is spent every year in the US alone across legal fees, mediation, financial restructuring, therapy, custody planning, moving house, selling
Theses
3x Thesis: The pet industry is begging for a platform.
Not another subscription treat box. Not another tele-vet point solution. A true platform, vertically integrated, brand-led, and built around the modern pet parent. Vet tech. Grooming. Supplements. Home delivery. Bundled into one membership, one app, one trusted brand. 1. Pet ownership is booming, but the experience is broken. There are
Theses
3x Thesis: If you’re building a med spa platform today, don’t invest in real estate, invest in distribution.
The aesthetics industry loves talking about location like it’s gospel. “Affluent ZIP code.” “High visibility.” “Street-front retail.” However, the best med spa location might be someone else’s. Here’s the 3x thesis behind why hotel and gym partnerships on a rev-share model are one of the most overlooked
Theses
3x Thesis: Insurance-Adjacent Services- Home warranties, inspections, and mitigation as an investment platform.
Buying a home services business? Still a smart play. You get: – Non-discretionary demand – Fragmented competition – Predictable cash flows – And plenty of exit paths (especially if you stack a few trades together) But here’s a better question PE firms should ask: What if instead of owning a service company... you
Theses
3x Thesis: Digitizing the Funeral Industry
Morbid margins, minimal tech, and a $100B generational wealth transfer. The funeral industry is one of the last remaining consumer sectors untouched by modern technology. It’s awkward, analog, and full of friction. And that’s exactly what makes it interesting. Let’s start with the basics: the average cost
Theses
3x Thesis: The “Blue-Collar SaaS” Rollup
Everyone’s chasing the next vertical SaaS winner in finance, healthcare, or HR. Meanwhile, the trades are quietly becoming one of the best software rollup opportunities out there. What I call “Blue-Collar SaaS”.........job schedulers, quoting tools, dispatch systems, customer communications platforms, CRMs for trades. Plumbing, HVAC, electrical, roofing, landscaping,
Theses
3x Thesis: The “Hyperlocal Lead Gen Arbitrage” play is still dramatically underpriced and underutilized.
Take Pinnacle Home Services, backed by Trivest. They’ve been rolling up HVAC, plumbing, and electrical companies across the Southeast, and doing something smart that most folks miss: They centralized marketing. Instead of letting each acquired business keep its old-school mix of direct mail, print, and the occasional Facebook boost,
Theses
3x Thesis: Why bundling boring services beats building a single-product home services company
The invisible infrastructure of the American household has a ton of business opportunity Say you’re scaling a single-product home services business, pest control, lawn care, maybe appliance repair. You centralize ops. One call center. One CRM. But you’re still selling one service. One category. One shot at retention.
Theses
3x Thesis: From Commodity to Brand. Premiumization in Unsexy Markets
Home services are a hot space in PE right now, and for good reason. Recurring demand, fragmented markets, and operational levers make them attractive. But too many firms stop at the basics: backend consolidation, procurement savings, and cost control. The real alpha is in premiumization. Transforming a commoditized service into
Theses
3x EBITDA Thesis: The AI-Enabled Rollup. Cutting SG&A Across Fragmented Services
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