Recently? I do think this is generally an issue with PE sellers but they just aren't coming to market. Founder / family sellers generally have been advised by their broker where the market is and brokers have at least some incentive to be honest in order to get a deal done.

Hard to describe how true this is. A former partner of mine ran a public company once. He said that in PE you have to do everything twice as fast with half the resources....

Who did this list? In what world is SJSU a better school than UCLA, Michigan, UVA, UNC?

I think this has been happening for years and will continue. But the fundless sponsor world is very different than the fund world. Many try it and never get a deal done. My advice is start small and get your first one on the board....

If you haven't seen this on Netflix it is a must see. Connor is clearly a really interesting and smart guy....

Yet another great chart showing that PE isn't just one thing. The $500M LMM fund has very little in common with the $1T Blackstone. And the dispersion of returns in private equity is one of the highest in any asset class. So manager selection is critical. Private equity isn't

This can't last. Private credit and private equity are very linked...

Let me respectfully disagree a bit with Paul W. Swaney III. My sense is that over the last decade private equity has started to pursue a bit of a bar bell strategy. There are two types of firms that have done really well. On the one hand, true value players who stay

Just an awesome article about how little we really know about monetary policy. It is a tough read but very worth it for those who are really interested in economics and monetary policy.

I wrote a long post on how the model built by Nate Silver is overly complicated and relies an a key assumption that is pretty difficult to estimate. So with an election coming up how do you follow what is likely to happen? Simply go to one of the polling aggregators and look

This is a really good point. In PE, you can always decide to put more money in later. If you borrow 7x, you always put a couple of turns of equity in later to pay down debt. Borrowing more is essentially an option.

FWIW, my experience is that the PG is not there to take your house if the business fails. It is there to make sure that the owner will play along if the business struggles and the lenders need to try to maximize their recovery. Interesting if other have different experiences.

This couldn't be more true. The funny thing is it isn't even that hard of a problem. They know when flights are going to take off and have a very clear idea of number of passengers at different times of the day. And yet they can't prevent long lines. Think how much harder it

To add to the discussion about South Florida as a financial hub, the number of sponsors in Florida has doubled since pre Covid. Most of them are in Southeast Florida. My guess is the numbers are even more compelling for hedge funds. South Florida may not become a start-up hub

FWIW, I think it is less about just raising prices and more about discipline around pricing. We are doing customer / product / channel level profitability analysis at every portco. Often they have never looked at it. We are then going to use that analysis to understand where

This is so true. Most small businesses are run on Quick Books and don't have a CRM. The idea that they need AI is insane. SMBs should be fast followers on tech.

This is a very interesting chart. We often hear how poor our educational system is the US. But when you look at the full distribution and not just the average you see that we are doing quite well. And of course we have the best college system in the world with the wealthy

This is extremely charitable. With 5 years of experience as a successful partner at a well known fund it will be very very hard to raise a fund. Less than that there is no chance. Go the fund less sponsor route. The best ones eventually can raise a fund and a number have done

I can't tell you how much I disagree with these types of posts. ClearLake is a really really good PE shop. I am sure they did tons of work on all of these add-ons. We are in the risk business. You don't earn 20%+ IRRs without taking some risk. If you want no risk then go buy

I disagree with this. If anything, I find that PE funds are more likely to fall in love with their portcos and not sell soon enough. You should have a clear view of what you want to do with a business you buy and once that is done sell it. And I love this series by