Toolkit
BluWave is a vetted service-provider marketplace for PE, not an expert network. When a marketplace is the right tool, how BluWave compares with Catalant, and the categories of alternatives, from expert networks to embedded growth-execution firms.
Toolkit
A private equity firm that wants operating muscle has two ways to get it: build a captive operations team, or rent operators from outside. How the two models actually differ, and which fits the fund in front of you.
Toolkit
"Marketing help" for a private equity portfolio company means four different things: embedded growth execution, PE-vertical performance agencies, fractional marketing leadership, and data or diligence specialists. Most lists conflate all four with fund marketing, the IR and fundraising side. This one does not. Every firm below works
Toolkit
The buy-and-build deck always works. A platform at 6x, three add-ons at 4.5x, blend the multiple down, grow the combined entity, exit the whole thing at 9x or 10x. On paper it is the most reliable value-creation story in the mid-market, which is why
Toolkit
A portfolio operations group (also called a portfolio operations team, value creation team, or portfolio resources group) is the in-house team a private equity firm uses to improve the operating performance of the companies it owns, as opposed to sourcing and structuring the deals. The deal team buys the
Toolkit
Ask two private equity investors what happens after the wire hits and you will get two different answers. One buys a company to keep it: hold it indefinitely, keep the people, take the cash flows, and let compounding do the work. The other buys a company to change it: install
Toolkit
Every private equity deck in 2026 says the same thing. Returns will come from operations, not leverage. The financial-engineering era is over, the operating era has begun, and the numbers now back the slogan: in S&P Global Market Intelligence's 2026 Private Equity Survey, 71% of
Toolkit
We treat a continuation fund as what it is: a tool, not a verdict. The same vehicle that lets a genuinely strong company keep compounding under an owner who understands it can also let a tired one dodge the markdown it has already earned. Nothing in the structure tells you
Toolkit
A private equity carve-out is when a buyer purchases a division, business unit or product line out of a larger parent company and stands it up as a separate, standalone business. The parent no longer wants the unit, or wants the cash more than the asset; the buyer thinks
Toolkit
Operating partners have gone from a nice-to-have to a line item LPs ask about. But "bring in an operator" is easy to say and expensive to get wrong: the wrong hire, the wrong remit, or the wrong reporting line can burn a year of a hold
Value Creation
Funds are borrowing against their whole portfolio to manufacture cash. How it actually works, and who carries the risk.
Toolkit
Most managers brace for the credit conversation and underprepare for the one that actually decides the outcome. Here is what tends to go wrong when GPs approach a NAV facility, seen from the side of the table that has to underwrite it, and what a sound deal should look like