Private equity
Foundations, Growth, Scale
Three rungs, in order. Each one ends where the next begins, and none of them is worth starting before the one below it holds. Most funds start and stay at the first — comparability is usually the constraint, and it gates everything above it.
Operating partners and heads of portfolio operations at mid-market funds, typically four to eight holdings. The unit is the holding. The clock is the value-creation plan.
- 1FoundationsMake the holdings comparable.
- 2GrowthMake the playbook transfer.
- 3ScaleDefend the exit, and screen what you buy.
Foundations
Available nowFive companies, five sets of definitions, and no comparable read across any of them. Holdings cannot be ranked until each one has been measured the same way — which is why this rung gates the two above it.
What it installs
- Comparable readiness across every company in scope
- The binding constraint per company, and the work to close it
- Quarterly readiness reviews — one verdict for the partnership, not a stack of founder anecdotes
- Cross-company patterns the individual companies cannot see
- Baselines ratified with you before anything is measured against them
What it moves
- Comparable readiness per holding
- The ranking stops coming from memory
- Binding constraint, named per company
- Operating time goes where it is actually blocked
- Forecast comparability
- A stage means the same thing at company three as at company one
Growth
Once the rung below holdsA single company solves complex-deal execution by having one person who is good at it. A portfolio cannot: that person does not work at the other seven, and when they leave, the capability leaves with them. This rung moves it out of people and into a playbook.
What it installs
- A hundred-day go-to-market playbook installed identically at each holding in scope
- Buying-committee mapping and champion development as a portable capability, not one rep’s instinct
- Stage-gated advancement criteria applied the same way everywhere, so forecasts become comparable
- Value realisation tracked against metrics the customer agreed to, not metrics we chose
- The playbook deployable at the next acquisition, rather than rebuilt for it
What it moves
- Win rate on complex deals
- Board-tracked, and comparable across holdings
- Sales cycle and pipeline velocity
- Compresses the value-creation timeline directly
- Net revenue retention
- What value realisation produces, and the metric weighted most heavily after growth
- CAC payback
- The efficiency half of the plan
Scale
Once the rung below holdsGrowth proves the holdings can execute. This rung asks whether that will survive contact with a buyer — and where the next revenue comes from when organic growth is too slow to hit the plan.
What it installs
- Referenceable revenue — customers who will speak to a buyer or a banker, identified and prepared well before anyone needs them to
- Commercial capability that transfers: what worked at one holding installed at the next, or at a company you are about to buy
- Expansion into adjacent segments where organic growth is actually viable, and an honest read on where it is not
- A commercial screen on acquisition targets already under evaluation — ICP overlap, cross-sell viability, and whether the revenue survives the close
What it moves
- Customer concentration
- The discipline most funds state and few instrument
- Forward book, not growth rate
- The account that looks worst on growth often holds the durable revenue
- Share of revenue with willing references
- A proxy for durability a buyer will actually test
- Cross-sell attach rate post-close
- Whether the acquisition thesis was commercially real
On pricing
Foundations is priced and published. Growth and Scale are scoped against the portfolio once Foundations has produced a baseline — pricing a rung before the one below it holds is how engagements end badly.