Creating Capacity in Private Equity firms: Reflections of an independent business advisor
Firstly, congratulations on the growth and evolution of your private equity firm. In this turbulent world completing a set of investments is a major hurdle to jump, let alone getting to the place of launching funds two, three, and beyond.
With the first few companies in fund one, getting to know the leadership and joining the board and/or advisory committees are great ways to engage, support and add value but as things build and you move towards 10, 15 or 20 investments it is pretty much impossible to support them at the same attentive level. You end up triaging issues, which then bubble up later. Then, in time, you face issues that become increasingly complex and require additional time and resources to resolve or mitigate.
Constraints and problems can appear in a host of places including securing and retaining talent, sales, back-, middle-, and/or front-office technology, reporting, and processes, strategic planning, management meetings, stakeholder communication, and so on.
We are acutely aware of just how unobtainable revenue and fund value goals can become.
A lack of capacity can be a major contributor to current and future underperformance.
Here are some of the issues that your firm, or the businesses in your investment funds, may be experiencing:
The capacity to continually analyze, manage, and implement strategy to drive balance sheet and income statement performance and value.
Delivering and driving team member behavioral performance at all levels, including the most efficient and impactful management practices, sales processes, financial modeling, and data information systems.
Leadership and management development, coaching, and collaboration for owners, entrepreneurs, executives, and managers.
Culture alignment to business mission and goals.
Reducing key employee and operational risks.
Calibrating and prioritizing business operations and resources.
Supporting and delivering a culture of humility in the pursuit of excellence.
There are ways to build in resilience and durability to your fund(s) current and future performance
Aside from our current customer base at Waite Partners Advisory, our experience in private equity includes executive roles at Bill and Melinda Gates’ Cascade Investment and Bentall (now Bentall GreenOak).
That’s over 20 years of private equity wins, losses and a lot of lessons learned.
It may be that you need an extension of yourself to help out while you focus your attention on raising capital or you may need more capacity to support the businesses you are investing in, across areas such as sales, finance, operations, people and/or management.
We serve a small group of boutique private equity firms that aspire to generate value and growth among their firm, investments, and the people in them.
So, at any time in the future If you think that additional capacity would help you achieve your milestones please reach out and let’s schedule a 20-minute conversation to chat through your aims, concerns and challenges.