Private Equity Value Creation Podcast
Get behind-the-scenes access to the minds shaping the world of Private Equity, hear captivating stories about transactions and investments, and learn about the innovative approaches leading investors, operators, advisors and bankers employ to drive sustainable growth and create enterprise value. https://www.howtosaas.com/pevaluecreation
Episodes
In this episode, Adam Waglay, CEO and Co-Founder at Butterfly Equity, explains why food is an attractive sector for private equity, and why B2B enablers like ingredients and packaging offer a way to play consumer trends without betting on a single brand.
Hear how a dedicated transformation team embeds operators inside portfolio companies, how the playbook differs across three business models and where AI is creating the most leverag...
On this episode, John Dickie, Partner and Co-Head of Private Equity at HighVista Strategies, explains how HighVista evaluates the lower middle market managers it backs. Learn what separates the managers LPs back fund after fund from the rest, the role fund size plays in that decision and the conversations that show whether a value creation playbook holds up in practice.
Hear how a sharp slowdown in fundraising is reshaping private e...
On this episode, Taylor McKinley and Chris Cassidy, partners on the investment and growth teams at Mainsail Partners, break down how 40-plus operators and a deal team work as one. Learn why engaging companies a year or more before investing helps win deals and how operating support gets factored into the investment thesis and diligence.
Hear why companies at $5–10 million of ARR need practical help rather than just more adviso...
Ep. 154: Shiv Narayanan, How To SaaS | The AI Visibility Imperative and Driving Pipeline From Search
On this episode, Shiv Narayanan, Founder & CEO at How To SaaS, explains how AI platforms have changed the way buyers research and make purchase decisions, why being invisible to AI is a business continuity risk and what you can do about it.
Learn how platforms decide which vendors make a buyer's shortlist, why gated content works against you and why what customers say about you carries more weight than what you say yourself. The...
On this episode, Blair Garrou, Co-Founder and Managing Partner at Mercury Fund, details the Mercury Method—a post-investment approach that borrows from private equity to lower loss ratios in early-stage venture. Learn how a 100-point operational hygiene audit surfaces the most urgent risks and how fractional executives fill weak functions until they hire their own replacements.
Hear how an in-house AI lab supports assessments ...
Ep. 152: Jon Lange of THL Partners | Operational Support Models and AI's Impact Across the Portfolio
On this episode, Jon Lange, Managing Director at THL Partners, unpacks how private equity firms decide when and how much operational support to deploy into a portfolio company, and why that decision is never one-size-fits-all.
Learn why the old software moat no longer holds up on its own, and what still makes a company defensible in an AI-native market. Then learn how AI is already automating work that used to take entire teams, fro...
On this episode, Jim Toth, Managing Partner at Riverside Acceleration Capital, discusses how an in-house operating team works with portfolio companies to drive growth. Learn how pattern recognition across hundreds of companies helps identify who's ready to scale, how tracking over 100 data points on every company can reveal which growth investments move the needle and why a structured, benchmarked assessment across sales, marketing...
On this episode, Doyl Burkett, Managing Partner and Founder at Integrity Growth Partners, joins the show to talk AI-native deal sourcing. Learn how a two-person team can out-source firms ten times its size, and where that same system gets pointed once a company is in the portfolio.
Learn how to filter investments for AI risk using a simple framework of defensible moats, and see why the lower middle market may be where AI-driven sour...
On this episode, Jesse Bendit, Principal at Apax Digital, joins the show to unpack how a private equity firm builds and funds a 30-person internal operating team without letting it become bloated. Learn why a pull model beats a push model for utilization, how staying concentrated in 15 to 20 investments per fund lets a team build real sector depth, and how that depth shows up during diligence, not just after close.
Hear why trust&md...
On this episode, Dustin Ackerman, Managing Director at Future Standard, joins Shiv Narayanan to discuss secondaries and backing GPs, including how to turn existing sponsor relationships into a steady investment pipeline. Learn why focusing on portcos under $1 billion in enterprise value can mean less competition on price, cleaner cap structures and clearer exit paths, and how the GARP framework—growth at a reasonable price&md...
Ep. 147: Mike Esposito, Franchise Equity Partners | Box Economics and Multi-Unit Franchise Investing
On this episode, Mike Esposito, Co-Founder and Co-Managing Partner at Franchise Equity Partners, unpacks why multi-unit franchise investing has stayed an underserved niche in private equity, and what it takes to underwrite these deals well.
Learn how box economics—margins, rent and store format—separate the franchise brands worth backing from the ones that aren't, and why new-unit development, not same-store sales growth...
On this episode, Shiv Narayanan, Founder and CEO of How To SaaS, breaks down how to approach international and regional expansion as a growth lever, and why the first question you should be asking is: are we already capturing everything available in the markets we're in today?
Learn how to weigh the risk and investment required to expand geographically against other ways to grow, and why the right approach depends heavily on your bu...
On this episode, Stephen Gold, Chief Value Creation Officer at Ethos Capital, unpacks how value creation in portcos changes when investment partners are also operators and put personal capital into each deal, and how removing a formal investment committee shifts how decisions are made.
Hear about a four-step scoring process to help prioritize initiatives as well as an evaluation framework for deals in the diligence phase, and learn ...
On this episode, Alex Abell, Managing Partner at RCP Advisors, explains how fund of funds investors evaluate lower middle market managers—and why fund-level benchmarking alone fails to surface which GPs are genuinely creating value. Hear how deal-level data can validate or challenge the narrative a manager pitches, why a strong return in a single deal means little without peer context and how operational metrics like entry ma...
On this episode, Bob Root, Transformation Partner at Southfield Capital, discusses how to find and accelerate growth in services businesses that have been underserved by technology. Learn how deal teams evaluate growth options before close, choosing between regional expansion and adjacent-service extensions based on what a management team can realistically execute, and why trust with the existing workforce determines whether a tran...
On this episode, Sequoya Borgman, Founder and CEO of Borgman Capital, discusses buying and holding family and founder-led businesses in manufacturing, industrials and other legacy industries. Learn why leverage—not growth—often drives returns in these deals, and why hold periods can stretch decades rather than the typical PE fund cycle.
Hear how culture gets set early in a business, why professionalizing finance, systems...
On this episode, Mike Magliochetti, Operating Partner at Riverside Partners, shares what it means to be a deeply engaged operating partner—and why he believes the role has to go far beyond an advisory or check-in function to add real value to portfolio companies.
Learn what separates high-impact operating partners from the rest, what it takes to build trust and transparency with founding teams, and why a focused sector network...
On this episode, Jackie Joelson, Head of Private Equity and Venture Capital Practice at Oracle NetSuite, joins Shiv to break down why ERP transformation has become one of the established levers sponsors pull inside their portfolio companies.
Learn how buy-and-build roll-ups, sponsor-backed carve-outs and decades-old legacy systems each demand a different approach to ROI and change management to unlock the full enterprise value poten...
On this episode, Ian Ross, Partner at Concentric Equity Partners, discusses how being a family backed private investment firm changes the economics of lower middle market investing. Learn why fund-cycle pressure pushes firms to sell their best companies early, and how removing that pressure supports a feed-the-winners strategy that keeps reinvesting in businesses as they grow, using growth, multiple arbitrage and leverage to build ...
On this episode, Aryeh Landsberg, Managing Director at 17Capital, explains how NAV lending works as a flexible, fund-level capital tool for private equity managers—and why demand has been driven by opportunity rather than stress.
Hear how NAV facilities fit alongside traditional portfolio company debt, subscription lines and continuation vehicles across the fund lifecycle. Learn how 17Capital underwrites deals by assessing man...
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