Influencer Feed · 2026 Q2
ICP influencers, tracked.
34 resolved · 20 roll-up acquirers · 34 in current view.
NameTSectorPostsFollowersLatest
Lee McCabePrivate Equity, Digital Value Creation, Board Member, InvestorAb2b_services, it_services50+53K2h ago PE says it wants operators. The incentives say otherwise.
The reason private equity cannot keep operating tal…›
AI ReadOperator-turned-advisor who spent time inside a 45-company AEA portfolio — that's rare credibility in the PE value creation conversation, and his audience skews toward sponsors and operating partners who control portfolio budgets. Posts consistently, mixing sharp institutional takes (Ares, Carlyle fee model breakdowns) with operator dysfunction critiques that get real engagement. Russell's angle: the deal origination layer that feeds the portfolio companies Lee's clients are trying to grow — specifically, how AI-sourced deal flow changes the roll-up math before the operating work even starts.
Recent posts50
2h ago·36 reactions·10 comments✓ commentedOpen ↗
PE says it wants operators. The incentives say otherwise.
The reason private equity cannot keep operating talent is simple.
It pays for transactions and promotes for transactions.
That tells you everything.
A firm can say it cares about value creation all day.
It can put operating partners on the website.
It can talk about portfolio support, strategic resources, and hands on engagement until everyone in the room develops a mild rash.
But people follow incentives, not slogans.
And in most firms, the real status still sits with the deal.
Who sourced it.
Who won it.
Who got it through IC.
Who owns the relationship.
Who gets credit when the platform gets announced with a nice photo and some polished nonsense about partnership.
The operating side comes later.
Less glamour.
Less economics.
Less internal prestige.
Often less clarity on how success is even measured.
If things go well, the deal team still tends to get the halo.
If things go badly, the operator is suddenly "closer to the problem" and therefore closer to the blame.
Wonderful role.
So good operating people leave.
Not because they do not like operating.
Because they can read a compensation structure and an org chart.
They can see that transactions drive bonuses.
Transactions drive promotions.
Transactions create power inside the firm.
Meanwhile the people actually helping management teams fix pricing, org design, sales execution, systems, reporting, and all the other unglamorous work that determines whether the underwriting was fantasy or not are often treated like support functions with better biographies.
That is the problem.
Private equity keeps saying it wants world class operating talent.
But world class people usually do not stay where the message is:
please create value, but do not expect equal credit, equal economics, or equal influence.
That is not a talent strategy.
That is a retention plan for disappointment.
The firms that get this right understand something very basic.
If operations really matters, it has to matter in compensation.
It has to matter in status.
It has to matter in promotion.
It has to matter before the deal closes, not just after the first miss.
Otherwise the operating model is decorative.
And the best people will keep leaving for places where value creation is not treated like a sidecar to the real work.
Because that is the truth a lot of firms do not want to say out loud.
They do not have an operating talent problem.
They have an incentive honesty problem.
#ClaymorePartners #notveryprivateequity.com #PrivateEquity #ValueCreation
Your comment: The real tell: ask a PE firm to show you their operating partner compensation vs. their deal partner compensation, side by side. Most won't. The ones that will already fixed this.
Ares built the boring machine.
No insurance balance sheet. No synthetic spread income. No great mystical sermon about permanent capital while someone quietly bolts an annuity book onto the back of the firm.
Just fees.
From 2014 to 2025, Ares took fee-related earnings from roughly $150m to $1.8bn. Over the same period, realized net performance income stayed tiny by comparison. Even in the better carry years, it barely changes the story.
That matters because most alternative asset managers have spent the last decade trying to convince public market investors that they are less dependent on the thing that made them famous.
Carry is wonderful when it shows up. So is sunshine in Yorkshire.
The better business is the one where earnings do not require exits, marks, perfect timing, a benevolent Fed, and three investment bankers pretending the buyer’s “strategic rationale” justifies the price.
Ares has become one of the cleanest examples of the modern alternatives model. Credit-led. Fee-heavy. Scalable. Less theatrical than the mega-cap alts that now look like private equity firms, insurers, asset managers, retirement platforms, and small nation states wearing the same fleece vest.
To be fair, the insurance model is not wrong. Apollo and KKR have made that argument very well. Blackstone has built its own version through perpetual capital and retail. Those are real businesses.
Ares just took the simpler route.
Raise capital. Manage credit. Compound management fees. Keep carry as upside rather than the main course.
The caveat, because someone in compliance will otherwise develop a facial twitch: the pre-2020 carry figures are directional estimates because Ares changed reporting definitions over time. The shape of the chart is the point, not whether 2017 was off by a rounding error large enough to buy a nice house in Greenwich.
The lesson for PE-backed companies is painfully obvious.
The best businesses are usually not the ones with the sexiest upside story. They are the ones where the revenue engine keeps working when the market stops clapping.
Predictable beats heroic.
Sadly, that does make for a worse conference panel.
#ClaymorePartners #notveryprivateequity #PrivateEquity #AresManagement #AlternativeAssets
Most operating partners fail because the firm set them up to fail.
Operating partners do not usually fail because they lack skill.
They fail because nobody gave them authority, air cover, or a mandate anyone in the business actually respects.
That is a very different problem.
Private equity loves the idea of the operating partner.
It sounds serious.
Hands on.
Value creation oriented.
A sign the firm is more than just spreadsheets, leverage, and opinions in a conference room.
Then the OP arrives and reality kicks in.
No real budget.
No clear decision rights.
No direct line to the sponsor when management starts resisting.
No explicit backing from the board.
No clarity on whether they are there to advise, push, inspect, or actually change anything.
So they end up in the worst possible position.
Expected to drive change.
Not empowered to enforce it.
Management senses this immediately.
If the CEO thinks the operating partner is just a helpful suggestion in human form, that is exactly how they will be treated.
Polite meetings.
Selective listening.
A lot of nodding.
Very little movement.
Then six months later everyone says the OP "wasn't effective."
Maybe.
Or maybe the firm sent someone into a political system with no weapon, no cover, and no serious mandate, then acted surprised when influence turned out to be harder than the website implied.
This happens constantly.
The operating partner sees the issue.
Knows the fix.
Can tell where the business is drifting.
Can spot the weak leader, the broken process, the fake metric, the commercial problem management keeps dressing up as market softness.
But seeing it is not enough.
If the sponsor will not back the intervention, if the board will not reinforce the message, and if management knows there are no consequences for ignoring it, the OP is basically there to narrate the decline in better language.
That is not an operating failure.
That is an ownership failure.
Good operating partners need three things.
Authority.
Air cover.
And a mandate that survives contact with the CEO.
Without that, the role becomes theatre.
A smart person saying sensible things in rooms where nobody has to listen.
Private equity talks a lot about value creation.
It should spend more time asking whether its operating people have the power to create any.
#ClaymorePartners #notveryprivateequity.com #PrivateEquity #ValueCreation
Episode 32 is live! Codestrap’s CxC Ep32: “Private Equity’s AI Reality Check” with Lee McCabe, Partner at Claymore Partners.
Lee is a private equity advisor, board member, investor and growth leader with 25 years of experience across big tech, marketplaces, and PE-backed portfolios. Prior to Claymore, he served as Operating Partner at AEA Investors across a 45-company portfolio, and held GM-level roles at Alibaba, Meta, and Expedia.
Claymore Partners is a digital-first growth advisory firm helping private equity portfolio companies unlock value by embedding seasoned operators and specialists across digital marketing, data, and technology.
https://lnkd.in/g56xAQGN
Carlyle is a useful reminder that most private equity firms are still private equity firms.
That sounds obvious, but it matters.
The biggest alternative asset managers have spent the last decade making the model less dependent on the traditional private equity cycle. Insurance. Credit. Permanent capital. Spread earnings. Balance sheet scale. All very clever, all very useful, all slightly funny when the industry still calls itself private equity with a straight face.
Carlyle sits closer to the older model.
Management fees grow.
Carry comes and goes.
Exits matter.
Market windows matter.
Fundraising matters.
That is not a criticism. It is the normal shape of the business.
The chart is clean because the business is still relatively clean. Fee-related earnings have grown steadily, reaching roughly $1.2bn by 2025. That is the part public markets like. Recurring, visible, understandable.
The dashed line is the more traditional private equity bit. Realized performance revenues spike when the exit environment is good, then fall back when it is not. Which is exactly what carry does. It is not broken. It is just cyclical. Like pretending every company in the portfolio is “resilient” until the first refinancing memo lands.
The strategic question for Carlyle is not whether this model works. It clearly does.
The question is whether public markets will keep rewarding firms that look like classic private equity when the largest platforms are increasingly valued on earnings streams that look less like carry and more like financial infrastructure.
That is the real tension.
Carlyle stayed closer to the model most firms still live with.
The giants are the exception. Not the rule.
#PrivateEquity #AssetManagement #ValueCreation #ClaymorePartners #notveryprivateequity
Walker DeibelBuying businesses | Investing in private markets
Founder, PE & RE Fund | AuthorA—50+29K2h ago In 2000, Yale endowment manager David Swensen told institutions to go all-in on private markets. In 2005, he t…›
AI ReadCanonical "buy then build" voice for the acquisition entrepreneur crowd — his Acquisition Lab funnel pulls exactly the operator-buyers and independent sponsors Russell wants seeing SearchLoop. Posts consistently, 50 recent with solid engagement, mixing case studies (North Texas Trailers), market thesis content, and personal narrative. Best angle: the deal origination problem on the *buy-side* — Shane Ehrsam tripling locations is the outcome, but finding deal two and three is where operators stall. Russell has the infrastructure angle Deibel's audience hasn't fully heard yet.
Recent posts50
In 2000, Yale endowment manager David Swensen told institutions to go all-in on private markets. In 2005, he told individuals to stay out.
Same man, same data. Opposite prescriptions.
The interesting question is why.
Most people assume Yale's success came from private markets, but Swensen knew the edge was in who ran them.
By the endowment's own accounting, roughly 60% of the outperformance came from manager selection, backing exceptional operators and staying with them for decades.
In 2005, the average investor had no realistic path to replicating that.
Top funds often require millions of dollars.
Private investments couldn't be publicly marketed.
The best opportunities lived inside institutional networks.
Even if you wanted to follow Yale's playbook, you couldn't get on the field.
So Swensen told individuals to buy index funds. It was the honest advice for the market that existed, but that market has changed.
The JOBS Act of 2013 legalized public marketing of private securities. Minimums dropped. Infrastructure emerged. Private markets grew from roughly $1 trillion in 2005 to more than $11 trillion today.
I call it the Swensen Gap: the distance between what institutions could access and what individuals could.
For most of our investing lives, that gap was wide by design. Now, it's closing.
The question I keep coming back to is: what advice would Swensen write in 2026?
This week's Wealth Stack Weekly breaks down exactly how the walls came down, and what the three-stage path into private markets looks like for accredited investors today.
https://lnkd.in/eCvkcWHF
"Tell me about your childhood." I made the mistake of saying that to a psychologist over dinner.
I was at an entrepreneurship accelerator. We were out for a group dinner, and I ended up sitting next to the psychologist who had been running sessions for our cohort.
Trying to be funny, I looked at her and said it.
Instead of answering, she asked about my DISC profile.
No problem, I thought. I’m DISC certified. I’ve used it with employees, in sales conversations, and on myself for years.
I rattled off my results: high D, high I, high C, very low S.
She nodded, then said:
"Three traits above the line tend to show up in people who spent a long time trying to prove something to someone."
The whole table went quiet. She smiled.
"Tell me about your childhood."
My response was immediate: "I feel very uncomfortable right now.”
We both laughed. But it landed.
A lot of what looks like ambition is really the need to prove something.
That motivation can be incredibly powerful. Until one day you win.
You built the company from a garage to three locations. You make more money in a year than your parents made in a decade. You have nothing left to prove now.
Then you're left with the question ambitious people never plan for: now what?
At some point, proving people wrong stops being enough.
The ones who stay in it figure out how to love the game itself.
The $2 Trillion Shift Happening Inside Finance
Three years after acquiring North Texas Trailers, revenue is up 30%, and Shane Ehrsam is tripling his location count. Here's how he got there:
He started with 15 employees.
He added 9 more.
He gave everyone health benefits, a 401 (k), and incentive-based pay.
No outside capital.
All these changes came from operating cash flow, while carrying acquisition debt.
Most see that on a spreadsheet and think “risk,” but Shane spent years leading large teams and understood something fundamental about culture.
When your lead tech has 35 years of trailer experience, and your service manager knows every customer by name, losing them isn’t just a headache; it’s an existential threat to the business itself.
Culture built in year one is the foundation on which everything else scales.
The employees you retain in year one are the operating leverage on which the entire business depends.
That doesn't mean ignore the P&L.
It means knowing the difference between getting lean and starving the business.
Those two things look identical in a budget. They produce completely different outcomes over a three-year hold.
The same investor helped Yale grow its endowment from $1B to $40B using private markets…
Later, that investor told everyday investors to avoid private equity altogether and stick to index funds.
At first, it sounds completely contradictory.
But one thing we’ve realized recently is that much investing advice only makes sense when you understand who it’s meant for.
Institutions play a very different game than individuals:
- different liquidity needs
- different time horizons
- different access
- different risk tolerance
This week in Wealth Stack Weekly, we break down the 3 real reasons behind these opposing strategies and why understanding the context behind investing advice matters more than most people think.
Honestly, this one has entirely changed how we think about alternatives.
Join 500k subscribers! Full breakdown tomorrow 👇
www.wealthstackweekly.com
John WilsonCEO @ The Wilson Companies | Building a $100M Home Service Business | Host of toAtrades, hvac, plumbing50+8.2K2h ago 3 days.
That's a good number for forecasting your schedule.
It gives you time to:
- Increase ad spend
- Se…›
AI ReadOperator-turned-media-brand running one of the most followed home services communities in the country — his Owned and Operated audience is exactly the independent operator and search/roll-up crowd Russell needs visibility with. Posts frequently but engagement is modest (avg 5-7 reactions), meaning the comments section isn't crowded. The buy-box post is the entry point: Russell can add the capital-markets layer Wilson's audience never hears — what makes a trades platform financeable vs. not from the sponsor side.
Recent posts50
3 days.
That's a good number for forecasting your schedule.
It gives you time to:
- Increase ad spend
- Send email campaigns
- Launch SMS blasts
- Adjust pricing
An SMS campaign can be sent in 10 minutes and fill tomorrow's schedule.
A 3-day call board turns forecasting into action.
Small businesses typically do not require revolutionary changes to grow rapidly. They need disciplined execution of the fundamentals at a higher level.
What does this look like? I share my thoughts in today's newsletter...
SEO has changed fast over the last 12 months.
Most home service companies haven’t adjusted yet.
AI Overviews are changing how customers search, which companies get clicks, and what actually ranks. The old SEO playbook is getting outdated quickly.
Lisa Appleby, Head of Organic Search & Websites at Service Scalers, is hosting a free live session breaking down what home service operators need to understand now.
She’ll cover:
- How AI Overviews are impacting local search visibility
- Why E-E-A-T and brand authority matter more than ever
- What technical SEO foundations still move the needle
- How conversational and AI-powered search are changing customer behavior
- What HVAC, plumbing, and electrical companies should prioritize over the next 12–24 months
When? June 2, 2026, at 1 PM ET
Save your seat...https://lnkd.in/eUUzYnG4
A lot of contractors look at competing companies with 20,000 Google reviews and assume the game is already over.
False.
Today's newsletter tells you why.
We pass on way more deals than we say yes to.
Why? Because a bad acquisition can drag you backward.
The wrong ingredients slow growth, burn cash, and distract from the business you already know how to run.
Knowing what's inside your "buy box" allows you to make informed and confident acquisition decisions.
What's inside your buy box?
Ted SeidesPodcaster and Investment Industry ExpertB—50+35K2h ago A career across value investing and middle-market private equity became the foundation for a different kind of…›
AI ReadTed Seides runs Capital Allocators, the podcast that's become required listening for LPs, endowments, and institutional allocators — not PE operators, but the people writing checks into PE funds. The audience overlap with Russell is indirect but real: search funders and independent sponsors increasingly need to understand how institutional capital thinks about manager selection and fund construction. Seides posts consistently but lightly — 50 posts with low engagement suggests a broadcast-style presence, not a community builder. The sharpest angle for Russell: the allocator-to-operator translation gap. Seides covers how capital gets deployed into funds; Russell sits on the deal origination side of what those funds actually do with it. A comment bridging "what allocators want from managers" to "what that pressure looks like when you're sourcing deals at the portfolio company level" would be genuinely additive to his audience and invisible to most commenters.
Recent posts50
A career across value investing and middle-market private equity became the foundation for a different kind of firm. Erik Brooks, Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Ethos Capital shares the lessons on risk, betting on people, and what led him to build a firm that does one deal a year — on purpose.
https://lnkd.in/ejAahYCX
With thanks to AlphaSense, Bipsync, and SRS Acquiom.
Most pitch meetings are lost in the first 60 seconds.
John Kim says paying attention to these 4 things will help mitigate those losses and make you stand out in the monotony of your potential investor's day.
Rapport. Credibility. Attention. Interest.
The trap most allocators and managers fall into is reversing the order: leading with the sell before rapport is built. Josh's framework forces you to earn the right to pitch.
Worth re-listening before your next first meeting: Episode 503: Making Mistakes with Kimmer is available wherever you get your podcasts.
Your comment: Same sequencing trap shows up in deal outreach. Most buyers lead with fund size, last deal closed, "checking in." That's the sell before rapport. The emails that get replies do the opposite — mention something specific about the business first, signal you did the work, then open the door. Rapport isn't chemistry. It's proof you showed up prepared.
Ted Williams would regularly let strikes go straight through the strike zone.
Fans would lose their minds. Coaches too. The pitch was RIGHT THERE, but Williams had studied his successes and knew the game he brought to the field. He knew exactly which strikes he could hit out of the park, and which ones would get him thrown out. So he'd just watch them go by.
John Kim told me this story when I asked him how the best fundraisers handle objections. $70 billion raised, and yet the discipline is not to swing at half of it.
🎧 Full episode with Kimmer is linked in the comments below!
I've interviewed some of the best investors in the world. The ones who raise the most money aren't always the smartest in the room; they're the ones who are best at making other people feel like they are.
John Kim spent three decades raising over $70 billion and distilled it all into one insight: most of us are wired to treat people the way we want to be treated. In sales, in leadership, in parenting, that instinct quietly undermines us every time, and the best fundraisers figured out that the opposite is true.
🎧 Full conversation with Kimmer is live now wherever you stream your podcasts.
"It's not a sales pitch. It's not an interview. It's an audition."
When you walk in, the investor already has a picture in their head of who they want in front of them. Your job isn't to convince them of your strategy. It's to be the person they're looking for.
Come in too slick to a fund that wants grit, you've lost them. Come in too casual to a fund that wants a killer, same result.
The persona matters as much as the pitch. And if you get it wrong, Kimmer says, sometimes you just blow it.
🎧 My full conversation with John Kim is out now link in comments.
Derek CormierFounder, Contractor, Speaker & Entrepreneur.
Making the trades fun again!
8-Atrades, hvac, plumbing, electrical50+3.3K2h ago Appreciate Nicole Bergen and the Get Nerdy with Bergie podcast for having me on. If you are in home services a…›
AI ReadOperator-turned-owner running a real 8-figure multi-trade platform in home services — exactly the profile PE roll-up buyers are trying to acquire or partner with. His audience skews toward trade business owners and operators, not investors, which is the gap Russell fills. Posts 4-5x/week consistently, solid engagement on technical and ops content. Best angle: buyer-side perspective on what makes a trades platform actually acquirable — recurring revenue signals, brand equity (the sticker post is a gift), and what roll-up buyers price in that operators never think about.
Recent posts50
Appreciate Nicole Bergen and the Get Nerdy with Bergie podcast for having me on. If you are in home services and you are still posting Canva graphics and $49 tune up specials and wondering why nothing is working this episode is for you. We get into what is actually driving results for us right now. Give it a listen.
I run an internal podcast for my team at Climate Experts.
This episode was a reminder.
Last month we generated $30,000 tied directly to sticker placement and brand consistency at the point of service.
Some of my techs still treat it like it doesn’t matter.
It matters.
Install it straight. Right location. Every job.
That repetition is what builds trust in the home and trust is what drives repeat calls and referrals.
As a leader my job is to set the standard and hold people accountable to it. The small stuff isn’t small. It’s the whole game.
Climate Experts Air Plumbing & Electric
Most homeowners assume a parts warranty means the repair is free or close to it.
The reality is significantly different and the HVAC industry has done a poor job of explaining how this actually works. The manufacturer covers one thing. The major failed component. Everything else required to complete the repair correctly is the responsibility of the contractor.
That includes the filter drier which is required every time a system is opened. Copper fittings and line. Brazing rods. Nitrogen for line purging and pressure testing. Oxygen and acetylene for brazing. Armaflex insulation. PVC drain fittings pipe and glue. And in many cases refrigerant to recharge the system if the failed component caused a loss of charge.
None of these materials are provided by the manufacturer. None of them are optional. We are also not the manufacturer. We have no special financial relationship with the brand on your equipment.
We are an independent contractor that sources parts at market price pays for them upfront picks them up processes the warranty claim documentation and holds the failed component for up to 30 days in case the manufacturer requests it for inspection. If the manufacturer inspects that part and determines the failure is not covered under warranty they deny the claim entirely.
The contractor absorbs the full cost of the part with no reimbursement. We carry that financial risk on behalf of our customers because it is the right way to operate. This is not comparable to an automotive warranty where the manufacturer owns the dealership and controls the entire process.
Understanding this distinction is important for any homeowner navigating an HVAC warranty repair. We believe in being completely transparent about how our pricing works and what goes into every repair we perform.
#HVAC #HVACBusiness #ContractorLife #ClimateExperts #HVACWarranty #HomeOwner #Transparent #FloridaHVAC #HomeServices #Trades #HVACEducation #DoItRight #ContractorEducation
Climate Experts Air Plumbing & Electric
Why is your air conditioning always running and your electric bill consistently higher than it should be?
In many cases the answer is not the equipment. It is the installation. This video breaks down a real world example of an undersized return air opening on a 3 ton air handler installation.
An 18x18 inch return grill can only move approximately 900 CFM of air at proper velocity. A 3 ton system requires 1200 CFM to deliver full cooling capacity. The result is a system that is mechanically a 3 ton unit but functionally delivering only about 2.25 tons of cooling to the home. The homeowner paid for 3 tons. They are receiving 2.25.
And in most cases they will never know the difference until their energy bills tell the story.
Properly sizing an HVAC system requires far more than a square footage calculation. A Manual J load calculation accounts for window measurements, insulation R values in walls and ceilings, ceiling height, duct leakage, infiltration rates, and return air sizing.
Every one of these variables affects system performance and efficiency. Skipping any of them means the homeowner pays the price in comfort, energy costs, and equipment lifespan.
This is why the details matter. This is why we do it right at Climate Experts.
#HVAC #HVACBusiness #ContractorLife #ClimateExperts #ManualJ #ReturnAir #HVACInstallation #FloridaHVAC #HomeServices #Trades #HVACEducation #DoItRight
Climate Experts Air Plumbing & Electric
Recruiting is not something you do when you are short staffed. It is something you do every single day whether you need someone tomorrow or not.
Most contractors treat hiring as a reaction. The right contractors treat it as a system.
One of the most effective recruiting tools we have implemented at Climate Experts is the hiring event. We open our facility to the community. We conduct open interviews on the spot. We give candidates a full tour of our shop so they can see our culture, our equipment, and our team before they ever formally apply. We add a raffle to make it memorable and create an experience worth showing up for.
The results have been significant. Many of the people who attend are not ready to apply through a traditional job posting. They want to see the company first. They want to feel the culture.
A hiring event removes the barrier and bridges the gap between curiosity and commitment. If you are building a trades company and you are not doing hiring events you are missing one of the most powerful and underutilized recruiting tools available to you.
Episode 9 of Escape the One Man Show is live today on YouTube and Spotify. I sat down with Billy Gregus for a real conversation about how to break into commercial HVAC and what contractors need to know about making that move. Go listen and share it with someone who needs to hear it. 🎙️
#EscapeTheOneManShow #ContractorLeadership #HVACRecruiting #TradesBusiness #HiringEvent #ContractorGrowth #HVAC #HomeServices #ClimateExperts #Recruiting #Trades #SmallBusiness
Escape The One Man Show
Codie SanchezInvesting millions in Main St businesses & teaching you how to own the rest | HoB—50+571K3h ago I have a friend who is 40 and damn near a billionaire.
A few years ago, I asked him for advice on investing..…›
AI ReadCodie is the loudest voice in the Main Street business-buying movement — 1M+ newsletter readers, mostly aspiring and early-stage acquirers who overlap with Russell's search funder and independent sponsor audience at the smaller end. She's a heavy poster with strong engagement spikes (3K+ reactions on motivational content, 150-300 comments on tactical posts). The non-obvious angle: her audience *wants* deal flow infrastructure but doesn't know products like SearchLoop exist. Russell's edge isn't agreeing with her — it's adding institutional-grade deal sourcing context her community lacks, positioning SearchLoop as the upgrade path when her readers start doing real volume.
Recent posts50
I have a friend who is 40 and damn near a billionaire.
A few years ago, I asked him for advice on investing... and here's what he told me:
1. Most of wins in life land on the edge of controversy.
2. Be careful what you read, it becomes the way you think.
3. Anger is useful in physical fights but a killer of logic.
4. Having a strong opinion is a mark of intellect but having the ability to change it is THE mark of true intelligence.
5. Share your MVPs - every time you produce a product or idea, more come back ten-fold.
6. Anytime something is common practice, check if it’s common sense.
7. Strong beliefs paired with little knowledge is a dangerous spot to operate.
8. Your skin regenerates itself every 72 days completely. Your ideas need an equal level of velocity and regeneration. Challenge the old ideas and let them be reborn into something better.
9. Shortcuts and get-rich-quick schemes will get you lost.
10. Read widely, voraciously and continuously.
Don’t have a wealthy friend to give you advice?
No problem.
I’ve hosting a 3 day virtual event for people who want to own something real, earned, and in their control.
The best part? You probably already have the skills you need.
So stop forcing yourself to be a spectator in your own life, and choose your hard.
Tickets are at their lowest price we’ve ever offered, because I want you to have this opportunity to change your future.
Main Street Millionaire Live, June 18th - 20th. Completely Virtual.
Grab your ticket here → https://lnkd.in/exRQKZWa
Uncomfortable truth.
Let them hate you.
Let no desire to be loved stop you.
Let no focus on likability dissuade you.
You are not here to be liked, but to create that thing inside you no other can.
You are not here to make others comfortable, but to make the world a better place.
Stand in the truth of what your two hands have toiled for. Actions scream, words whimper.
While those who have known you as "quiet" try to push your voice back inside, remember: you playing small serves no one.
Who cares if they hate you?
Grow anyway.
You are not everyone’s cup of tea.
That’s good.
If this resonated, you should stick around.
Ankur Jain (CEO of $11B powerhouse, Bilt Rewards) thinks raising venture capital in your first 2 years is one of the worst things a founder can do.
Here's why.
When you take a check from a Silicon Valley VC, you're not just getting money, you’re signing away a piece of your soul.
Because when you spend VC money, you have to chase VC metrics.
In 2014 it was mobile app users, in the 90s it was eyeballs, and today it's "AI" stapled onto every pitch deck.
The metric of the month changes, but whether those numbers matter to your actual customers becomes irrelevant.
Ankur made this mistake twice in his first 2 companies.
So when he started Bilt, he did the opposite.
He bootstrapped everything, then took the first checks from real estate owners, the people who wanted to use his product.
They invested because if Bilt worked, they won.
That capital structure let him do something pretty insane: 18 months with zero revenue, fighting the Department of Housing to make rent payments count toward mortgage credit.
A traditional VC would have killed that bet by month 2.
But his customer-investors waited, because they wanted it to work and understood what he was doing.
Here's a line from his mentor I can't stop thinking about: Never trust a salaried investor.
They're not operating, they're not building, and they have no skin in the game.
They get paid whether you live or die.
So try to choose investors with something on the line.
↓↓↓
P.S. The full Ankur conversation is one of the best founder breakdowns I've heard in a long time, and you can watch the whole video here:
https://lnkd.in/edtxaRpf
Dan CremonsFormer PE Investor & CEO // Current PE Advisor // Author // 𝘏𝘦𝘭𝘱𝘪𝘯𝘨Ab2b_services, diversified50+23K3h ago Locking the editorial plan for the Q3 edition of The Operator's Edge this week. Quick ask for the PE operators…›
AI ReadDan Cremons sits at the exact intersection of PE operations and portfolio company leadership — his audience is operating partners, portco CEOs, and value creation-focused investors, all of whom are Russell's buyers or influencers. He posts consistently and generates real engagement, especially on culture/talent/ops themes. The sharpest angle: Russell can add the deal origination layer to Dan's value creation narrative — what happens *before* the portco work starts, when the roll-up thesis is still being sourced and underwritten. Dan's audience knows what breaks post-close; Russell knows what gets missed pre-LOI. That tension is genuinely useful to surface in comments, and it's a perspective Dan's network doesn't hear often.
Recent posts50
Locking the editorial plan for the Q3 edition of The Operator's Edge this week. Quick ask for the PE operators and operating partners reading this:
What's the one thing you're wrestling with right now that you wish someone would write honestly about?
Cool thing is: we tap into the growing network of Ascend execs + PE partners to crowdsource wisdom.
Drop any ideas in the comments so we can give the people what they want.
Operator's Edge is a briefing we send a couple times a year to PE execs and operating partners. 10 practical takes on relevant topics.
If you want on the distro list, drop a comment below and we'll add you ↓↓
Most smart PE folks recognize that a portfolio company's culture can directly impact PE returns... but many don't know what to look for.
Here are ten warning signs of cultural issues that could put a company’s success (and PE investors' returns!) at risk:
⚠️ Difficulty attracting great talent
⚠️ Excessive negative customer feedback
⚠️ Weak or declining employee engagement
⚠️ Debate and challenge are not encouraged
⚠️ Silos or competition among internal teams
⚠️ Higher-than-benchmark employee turnover
⚠️ Insistence on following a chain of command
⚠️ Infighting or finger-pointing among leadership
⚠️ Slow decision-making or unclear decision rights
Assess these in due diligence, and keep your antenna up for them post-closing.
* * * * *
If this post resonated with you...
♻️ Please repost to share with others
🔔 Follow Dan Cremons for more like it.
In earlier chapters of my career, when work got especially demanding, I'd make the same mistake every time:
I'd throttle up, work harder, and drop everything that brings me joy.
→ Stop reading.
→ Skip workouts.
→ Postpone trips.
→ Cancel dinners.
I'd convince myself it was the responsible thing to do. "Embrace the grind culture."
It felt productive.
But I now realize... it wasn't.
Took me embarrassingly long to realize: fun and recovery aren't distractions.
They restore your perspective.
They reset your nervous system.
They remind you that life exists beyond the next deliverable.
The tougher things get, the more you need them. Not less.
Year 2 of teaching Value Creation in Small Business at Chicago Booth is in the books. Last night was final presentation night, and I walked out blown away...
Glad I'm not competing with these 65 students for a PE ops or EtA job. The quality of thinking, pragmatism, and appreciation for the messy operating realities of SMB value creation was crazy impressive.
2 years ago, Alex Hodgkin, CFA invited me to do this with him. It's been one of the hardest and most gratifying things I've taken on in a while.
A few reflections on teaching from year 2:
→ Way more work and way more joy than I expected.
→ I'm at my best around smart people who want to learn. Turns out that's the whole gig. What a privilege.
→ Teaching is a full-body workout. Reading the room, steering Q&A, keeping the energy up, all at once. Like walking and chewing bubble gum for 3 hours straight.
→ It's one of the best ways I know to stay sharp. You never really know if you understand something until you have to teach it.
→ Behind every great class is a great TA, the unsung hero of the whole thing. Montgomery Miller was simply exceptional.
→ Failing is part of the gig. Some things we tried flopped. We asked for feedback, adjusted, kept moving.
Mostly though, just feeling grateful: to Alex, Montgomery, the epic lineup of guest CEOs who joined us (who have created billions of EV combined), and to the room full of students who showed up and brought it every week.
Udeaku Zack Jolene Sumair Michael Ross Wander Samriti Fiona Henry Dennis Gabe Rit Shingo Matthew Jay Zachary Michael Muhammad Iqbal Ibrahim Aarzoo James Yuval Selena Farisa Brian Baba Cael Nathaniel Owen Stuti Ned Diego Fernando Ryu Michael Yasir Alex Upesh Ryan Bhadri Thomas Gordon Casey Michael Rohan Suhardeep Piyush Michael Jack Noor Casey Jackie Imokhai Nickson Kimberly Jay Dorothy Joe Joey CJ Grant Janet Melissa Elena
I've done something like 200 discovery/intake calls with PE execs for Ascend at this point. By far the top thing that these leaders are yearning for?
Connection to other PE execs walking a similar path.
Not another playbook.
Not another framework.
Def not another op partner.
They want real conversation and peer learning with other execs who are in the arena.
Never ceases to amaze me how much of an accelerant this can be. If your port-co CEO is struggling with a challenge, chances are, someone else in that room has seen it and solved it.
If you're a sponsor wondering how to best support your execs, it's this.
Maxwell SalazarPrivate Equity Leadership Advisory | Executive & Organizational AssessmentB—50+9.7K3h ago 74% of private equity-backed CFOs get branded as "underperforming" by their PE sponsors.
The CFOs know it. …›
AI ReadBusiness psychologist turned PE leadership critic with a debut book and a growing audience of GPs, operating partners, and portfolio executives — exactly the decision-makers Russell needs visibility with. Posts 50 times recently with two viral hits (211 and 291 reactions), so he's an active content engine, not a lurker. The sharpest angle: Russell can add the deal-origination layer to Maxwell's operator-fit thesis — when you're running a roll-up in specialty trades or HVAC, leadership assessment starts before the LOI, not after close.
Recent posts50
74% of private equity-backed CFOs get branded as "underperforming" by their PE sponsors.
The CFOs know it. 77% worry about losing their job. (And for good reason).
PE CFOs turn over at 2x the rate of their publicly traded counterparts. These aren't rookies either.
82% already held the CFO title before they took the seat.
So why do the vast majority fall short of PE expectations? Sponsors generally cite "weak finance fundamentals" as one of the top reasons.
Sounds like a technical competence problem. (It's not).
What does "weak finance fundamentals," actually mean?
The data says: (1) slow close and (2) messy transaction integration.
Slow close = a CFO never built the team or the process to deliver on cadence. Better accounting won't fix this.
Messy transaction integration = poorly managing systems, people, and deadlines. Technical mastery won't save you here.
𝗧𝗵𝗲 #𝟭 "𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗲" 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗹𝗮𝗶𝗻𝘁 𝗶𝘀 𝗮𝗰𝘁𝘂𝗮𝗹𝗹𝘆 𝟮 𝗹𝗲𝗮𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗵𝗶𝗽 𝗳𝗮𝗶𝗹𝘂𝗿𝗲𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗻𝗼𝗯𝗼𝗱𝘆 𝗶𝘀 𝗰𝗮𝗹𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗹𝗲𝗮𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗵𝗶𝗽 𝗳𝗮𝗶𝗹𝘂𝗿𝗲𝘀.
The ability to delegate, build a team, manage ambiguity, execute at pace, and influence others. These are the skills that matter. Yet PE firms keep hiring CFOs based on logos and pedigree.
Every CFO swap costs you 6-12 months and a small fortune. Do that twice and your IRR is cooked.
But if sponsors keep calling this a finance problem, they keep hiring for finance. Same criteria = Same result.
The traits that actually predict survival are knowable before the offer goes out. (Most sponsors just never look).
And you can't select for traits/skills you refuse to name.
Sources: Accordion, The State of the PE Sponsor & CFO Relationship (2025); Russell Reynolds Associates (2025); Cowen Partners Executive Search, CFO Movement Study (2023); BluWave (2025).
Your comment: Same dynamic plays out in deal origination. Firms hire for logos — "she sourced deals at KKR" — then wonder why nobody built a repeatable system. Sourcing at a mega-fund with 50 analysts and a brand name behind you is a different job than building origination from scratch at a lean shop.
The trait that predicts survival in both roles is the same: can this person build something that works when they're not in the room. Most can't. Nobody asks.
Thrilled to announce my debut book: EBITDA, Pray, Leverage: One GP's Journey Through Middle-Market Private Equity.
I'm a business psychologist who specializes in executive interrogation. I've seen/heard things most people wouldn't believe.
Now, I'm pulling the curtain back on how private equity firms select portfolio leaders. The raw unfiltered truth.
𝗛𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝗶𝘀 𝘀𝗼𝗺𝗲 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗳𝗲𝗲𝗱𝗯𝗮𝗰𝗸 𝗳𝗿𝗼𝗺 𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗹𝘆 𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀:
"I felt personally attacked on every page." -- Vice President, Gorgonzola Capital
"Mr. Salazar has never worked at McKinsey and it shows." -- Current strategy consultant
"Glad to know I wasn't the only one who trusted our Operating Partner's golf buddy as PortCo CEO." -- Managing Director, Priapus Partners
"Wildly inaccurate. The junior associates running our CEO searches aren't 23 years old. They're 25." -- Big Box Search Firm Partner
"I laughed. I cried. And then I updated my resume." -- PE-Backed CFO in year 8 of the hold period.
"I wish I'd read this before I rolled my equity. -- Former PortCo CEO, Currently in Therapy.
"We look forward to seeing Mr. Salazar in court." -- Attorney, Suckman & Gluckman LP
Coming never to a Hudson News near you!
To celebrate, I'm giving away signed copies to the first 20 people who comment "EBITDA"
"I ran the numbers on your labor costs and I think you can deliver the same output with fewer techs in the field."
A mid 20s private equity associate walks into a board meeting with a recommendation he built in Excel over the weekend.
He's never managed a team.
He's never run a lemonade stand, let alone a P&L.
He's never had to fire someone and explain it to the remaining employees on Monday morning.
Yet he speaks with the conviction of a gray-haired industry veteran. And that conviction is what kills the operator-board relationship.
The irony here is that none of this is ever done with ill intent. The PE sponsors are also under pressure and genuinely think they're being helpful.
But good intentions don't prevent the breakdown.
PE sponsors hire me as an independent third party to evaluate their Portco leaders. But I've come to realize that I'm often the only unconflicted observer watching the frustration simmer.
That frustration has nowhere to go. Which is where I come in.
There are things operators wish they could tell their boards. They fantasize about grabbing them by the collar of their Patagonia vest and shaking them vigorously.
Telling them that what they are doing is actively hurting execution. That if they really wanted to help, they would get out of their way. Open doors. Remove barriers. And clarify priorities.
But they can't say it directly to their PE sponsor. The incentives and power dynamics punish radical candor.
So oftentimes, I'm the neutral party who has to tell the PE sponsors that their breath stinks.
In every portfolio company, the operator-board relationship is the most important and most neglected dynamic.
Sometimes, truth-telling has to come from outside. Or both sides will keep talking past each other until the CEO quits or gets pushed out.
Bukowski knew a few things about waking up next to the wrong person. He had strong opinions about how private equity selects its portfolio leaders.
All jokes aside,
PE treats talent sourcing and talent assessment like the same job. They're not even the same profession.
I rant about this topic weekly, yet my DMs are full of people who think I'm a recruiter (I'm not). Here is the difference:
𝗦𝗼𝘂𝗿𝗰𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗶𝘀 𝗮 𝘀𝗮𝗹𝗲𝘀 𝗷𝗼𝗯 (led by recruiters).
You're combing through networks, vetting experience and credentials, then selling the opportunity to top talent. Placement = payment.
𝗔𝘀𝘀𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗶𝘀 𝗮 𝗺𝗲𝗮𝘀𝘂𝗿𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗷𝗼𝗯 (led by business psychologists).
You're predicting how a specific human will perform under board pressure, capital constraints, and a hold clock. With zero placement incentive.
Assessment professionals dig into what the resume will never tell you. What a leader is like at their best and at their worst. Beyond the polished interview performance.
Different training. Different methods. Different professionals.
The big search firms know this. Yet they bundle "assessment" into the search engagement anyway, because unbundling it would cost them margin (and we can't have that if the search firm is also PE-backed.)
But who is kicking the tires on what really matters? CXOs rarely get pushed out for lacking technical competence. (Ok, maybe the HVAC founder's nephew was actually a bad CFO).
But I'm talking about operators that the PE firm selects vs inherits.
Most of their exits come down to the "psychological intangibles." Rigidity. Failure to adapt. Inability to make decisions with incomplete information. Emotional volatility. And pissing the wrong people off.
None of this lives on a resume.
Your Big Box search firm can't see it (and doesn't want to). Both would slow down the placement machine. And considering the 7-figure cost of CXO churn, the industry can no longer afford to take shortcuts.
As Bukowski's once said on the Joe Rogan podcast, "Knowing people is a dirty business. You've got to sit with them long enough for the mask to slip. PE guys don't have the patience or the stomach for it. They want a spreadsheet that tells them a man is good. There is no such spreadsheet."
Private equity does not have a zombie fund problem. It has a hostage fund problem.
Zombie fund was a useful phrase for about five minutes. It describes what these funds look like from the outside: old, tired, wandering around with unrealised assets and no obvious way home. Very dramatic. Slightly Halloween. Not especially useful.
The real issue is structural.
A hostage fund is a fund where capital cannot be freed because no single actor has both the motivation and the power to free it.
The GP may be earning more from continued fees than it can realistically earn from carry.
The LPs may technically have governance rights, but not the coordination, incentives, or economic appetite to use them.
The assets may be marked at values the market will not pay, so selling means crystallising a loss everyone has been politely pretending is not there.
Nobody needs to be evil. Everyone can be acting rationally. That is what makes it worse.
The numbers are not small.
Global AUM in aged PE funds past their natural term has reached $829bn, up sevenfold since 2013.
Median holding periods for PE-backed companies hit 6.4 years in 2025, up 56% from 2007.
LP distributions fell to 6% of AUM in H1 2025, versus a ten-year average of 14%.
And for LPs trying to get out, the ransom gets uglier with age. Secondary pricing drops from roughly 94% of NAV for funds under five years old, to 71% at year ten, to about 44 cents on the dollar by year fifteen.
The longer you wait, the more the door charges admission.
The paper argues that the industry has spent a decade treating this as a performance problem when much of it is actually a governance failure sitting on top of weak operational value creation.
The exit is the proof.
Funds that get out cleanly usually have businesses that actually changed. Revenue moved. Margins improved. The platform thesis happened somewhere outside the board deck. Buyers can see it in the numbers.
The ones that stay trapped often have a different problem: the story aged better than the asset.
I wrote Hostage Funds because “zombie funds” no longer explains enough. It describes the corpse. It does not explain the handcuffs.
Full paper:
https://lnkd.in/gR24mE63
#ClaymorePartners #notveryprivateequity #PrivateEquity #Governance
Adam CoffeyCEO, Operating Partner, Board Member, CEO Coach, Consultant, Empire Builder, DeaAdiversified, b2b_services50+28K14h ago Most founders sell their company once, take the check, and walk away. I sold the same company five times and n…›
AI ReadFifty-eight acquisitions across nine PE sponsors makes Coffey one of the most credible roll-up operators alive — his audience is exactly Russell's buyer: PE-backed CEOs, search funders, and aspiring empire builders who need deal flow infrastructure. Engagement is moderate (12–34 reactions), not viral, but the comment sections are high-signal practitioners, not spectators. Russell's sharpest angle: the operational reality behind sourcing 58 deals — what the pipeline actually looked like before LOI, where AI-assisted origination would have changed the math.
Recent posts50
Most founders sell their company once, take the check, and walk away. I sold the same company five times and never left.
The exit isn't the finish line. It's a checkpoint on the wealth-creation highway.
Here's how it works. When you sell to a PE firm, you don't have to cash out completely. You take a meaningful amount off the table, then roll a portion of your equity into the new deal. You stay in the seat, keep running the company, and keep a stake in the next chapter.
Then the firm grows the business and sells again a few years later, usually at a higher value. Your rolled equity gets a second payday, often bigger than the first. Then you roll again.
My record is five separate multimillion-dollar paydays from one company in 13 years. My worst rollover returned 2x. My best returned 11x.
If I'd taken the first check and walked, I'd have made a fraction of what I actually made. The compounding is the whole game, and it only happens if you stay at the table.
The coins don't stack when you cash out. They stack when you stay in and let the next owner build on what you started.
#privateequity #empirebuilding #entrepreneurship #exitstrategy #wealthcreation
The skills that build a company to $10 million are the exact skills that will stall it at $30 million. Nobody warns founders about this, and it wrecks more good companies than any competitor ever could.
In the early days, your job is to do everything. You're the best salesperson, the best operator, the best problem solver in the building.
You control every decision because you should. At $0 to $10 million, that intensity is your superpower. You are the business.
Then you hit a wall. Usually somewhere between $10 and $30 million. And the founder's instinct is to do what always worked: grip tighter, work harder, get more involved. It's the exact wrong move. The thing that built the company is now the thing capping it.
Because you've become the bottleneck. Every decision routes through you. Your best people wait for permission. The business can only move as fast as you can personally touch every part of it, and you have run out of hours.
This is the gear shift. You have to stop being the first-chair player in every section and become the conductor. Your job changes from doing the work to leading the people who do the work. From managing transactions to managing process. From being in the business to being on it.
Most founders cannot make this shift. They've built their entire identity around being the one who does it all, and letting go feels like losing control. So they stall. The company plateaus, the best people leave, and the founder burns out wondering why working harder stopped working.
The ones who make the shift unlock the next gear. $30 million and beyond, where you partner with capital and build something far larger than you could ever run by hand.
Your business outgrew the way you run it. The hardest part of scaling isn't the business.
It's outgrowing yourself. This is the wall I help founders break through every single week.
#privateequity #empirebuilding #entrepreneurship #leadership #CEO
Life’s too short to buy fixer-uppers.
That was always my rule.
Find a good company.
Run by good people.
Give the founder a liquidity event.
Then make them a rollover investor so we’re aligned.
That’s the part people misunderstand about private equity.
At its best, it is not “sell and disappear.”
It is partnership.
The founder gets diversification.
The PE firm gets a motivated operator.
Everybody is working toward the second bite.
That alignment is what makes the playbook work.
#privateequity #empirebuilding #entrepreneurship #exitstrategy #wealthcreation
A few weeks away can give you a different kind of clarity.
After traveling to Japan and Korea, I found myself reflecting not only on the beauty of different cultures, but also on the discipline, intentionality, and attention to detail that can be seen in the way people move, serve, build, and lead.
As an operator, I notice those things.
The systems behind the experience.
The consistency behind the service.
The thoughtfulness behind the smallest details.
It reminded me that growth is not only about moving faster or doing more.
Sometimes, growth comes from slowing down long enough to observe what excellence looks like in a different environment.
That is something I want to continue bringing into the way we build at RxWellness.
A stronger patient experience.
A more intentional team culture.
A deeper commitment to doing things well, not just doing more.
Travel has a way of reminding us that leadership is not only shaped in meetings, decisions, and strategy.
Sometimes, it is shaped by what we pause long enough to notice.
#Leadership #OperationalExcellence #PatientExperience #HealthcareLeadership #RxWellness
When my clients win, my soul smiles...
One of the great joys of this chapter of my life is helping entrepreneurs achieve outcomes they once thought were out of reach.
This week, a member of Empire Builder Academy closed her first acquisition.
Not just any acquisition. A high-quality accounting firm with a high-quality owner. The acquisition nearly doubles the size of her company.
The purchase multiple was so attractive that the bank provided 100% SBA financing. And based on the value creation potential, this single transaction could add more than $10 million of enterprise value at exit. But don't take my word for it. Jayanthi Ganapathy's note to me says it all (used with her permission).
"I wanted you to be one of the first to know, because your guidance through Empire Builder Academy has been a genuine force behind this milestone."
"The deal had its share of complexity and curveballs, but the frameworks you've shared — how to think about value creation, how to stay focused when things get hard, how to build with intention — carried me through."
"This is the first acquisition for FinAccurate. It won't be the last."
— Jayanthi Ganapathy
What makes me happiest isn't the transaction itself.
It's seeing an entrepreneur realize they are capable of far more than they imagined.
Buying a business. Creating shareholder value. Building an empire.
I've spent decades buying companies, scaling them, and exiting them. Today, my greatest adrenaline rush comes from watching others do the same.
Congratulations, Jay.
The first acquisition is always special.
Now the fun begins.
Whose next? See you inside Empire Builder Academy (link in comments)
#MergersAndAcquisitions #AcquisitionEntrepreneur #AccountingFirm #BusinessGrowth #EmpireBuilderAcademy #Entrepreneurship #ValueCreation
Sam RosatiCo-Founder & Head of Acquisitions @ Perimeter Solutions GroupAtrades, diversified50+8.3K2w ago The latest episode of The Intentional Owner is an in-the-weeds chat for operating nerds like Sam Rosati and me…›
AI ReadOperator-turned-educator with real exit credibility — sold a commercial fencing roll-up to Bertram, now runs SMBootcamp teaching the next wave of searchers and indie sponsors. His audience is exactly Russell's buyer: pre-LOI searchers, early-stage operators, and deal-curious ETA folks who will eventually need deal flow infrastructure. Moderate poster, consistent but not prolific — content splits between PSG deal wins and SMBootcamp community building. Best angle: roll-up execution reality from the buyer side, specifically fencing/trades operational leverage and what actually breaks post-close at scale.
Recent posts50
The latest episode of The Intentional Owner is an in-the-weeds chat for operating nerds like Sam Rosati and me.
We discuss managing winter seasonality & backlog, pricing strategy, crew utilization, and operational leverage. A podcast for small biz owners by small biz owners!
If you are a SMB searcher, preparing to search, or ETA curious: register below for our summer webinar series with a co-host lineup that is stacked with experience and war stories.
If you’ve joined us before, you know our webinars are deep, highly technical and tactical - this is NOT your “passive listening” webinar series.
PS- we’re announcing a bonus session shortly to fill every technical gap you may have in your ETA journey.
Parents everywhere know this is one of the busiest times of year for youth sports!
From sports complexes and athletic facilities to community recreation spaces, PSG is proud to help create safe, secure environments where athletes, families, and fans can focus on the game. These projects play an important role in protecting facilities, organizing traffic flow, and maintaining the spaces communities rely on every day.
We love being part of projects that bring people together!
#PerimeterSecurity #AthleticFacilities #WeArePSG #PSG #PerimeterSolutionsGroup
Milestone alert!! 🚨 👀
> 375 closed deals
> approaching 400 and $2 billion
> Florida now number one, Texas two & Cali three
> Buyers moving up market
All credit to our amazing clients!
Find a group of entrepreneurs having more fun than us... you can't
Cc: Kevin Henderson, Sam Rosati, David Brackett
Amazing presentation from Peter Lehrman, CEO of Axial, on how to become the "buyer of choice" in a sea of competition for quality companies.
Mark WendaurOutside General Counsel to Privately Held Companies, Family Offices, Search FundA—50+2.0K4d ago Most ETA buyers do not just need a target company. They need the right acquisition model.
Traditional search …›
AI ReadOutside GC to the exact buyer universe Russell is building SearchLoop for — search funders, independent sponsors, family offices running LMM acquisitions. His audience *is* Russell's ICP. Consistent poster, 10-20 reactions per post, decent comment volume — engaged enough that a sharp reply gets seen. Best angle: Russell adds deal origination context to Mark's structural/legal framing — e.g., when Mark posts on buyer model selection, Russell can layer in how fragmented vertical sourcing changes which structure actually wins deals.
Recent posts50
Most ETA buyers do not just need a target company. They need the right acquisition model.
Traditional search funds, self-funded searches, independent sponsors, committed capital vehicles, holdcos, and family office acquisition models can all pursue similar lower middle market businesses.
But they do not create the same buyer. Each structure affects:
• seller credibility
• investor expectations
• control
• governance
• financing certainty
• economics
• post-close execution
That matters because many emerging searchers start with a future vision:
“I want to build a platform.”
“I want to do a roll-up.”
“I want to create a long-duration holdco.”
Those may be valid goals. But overbuilding the structure too early can create unnecessary legal expense, investor complexity, governance friction, and fundraising pressure before the buyer has even closed acquisition number one.
The right question is not just: “Where do I want to be in five years?”
It is also: “What structure gives me the best chance to close and operate the first deal well?”
This week’s edition breaks down the major ETA models, how they differ, and how their economics typically work. Worth reading if you are evaluating entrepreneurship through acquisition, raising capital for a search, or thinking about which acquisition model actually fits your strategy.
Most acquisition agreements still do not contain meaningful AI provisions.
That may be one of the biggest drafting gaps emerging in technology transactions.
As AI becomes embedded in operations, diligence questions are starting to move beyond cybersecurity and data privacy into ownership, training data, confidentiality, and compliance issues.
Buyers increasingly want to understand:
• who owns AI-generated content and outputs
• whether training data was properly obtained
• whether confidential information is being exposed through AI tools
• whether AI use complies with applicable laws and contractual obligations
Today, these issues often fall within traditional IP, data privacy, and compliance diligence.
Over time, they may become standalone diligence and drafting categories.
Worth considering if you're evaluating a business that relies heavily on AI tools or AI-generated content.
📰 Additional thoughts here: https://lnkd.in/gqayxM7B
⚠️ Note: These issues currently arise most often in software, technology, and AI-enabled businesses. The trend is significant enough that AI-related representations and disclosures were incorporated into the NVCA model financing documents in 2024, signaling increased attention to AI risk allocation and diligence.
Most ETA buyers do not just need a target company. They need the right acquisition model.
Traditional search funds, self-funded searches, independent sponsors, committed capital vehicles, holdcos, and family office acquisition models can all pursue similar lower middle market businesses.
But they do not create the same buyer. Each structure affects:
• seller credibility
• investor expectations
• control
• governance
• financing certainty
• economics
• post-close execution
That matters because many emerging searchers start with a future vision:
“I want to build a platform.”
“I want to do a roll-up.”
“I want to create a long-duration holdco.”
Those may be valid goals. But overbuilding the structure too early can create unnecessary legal expense, investor complexity, governance friction, and fundraising pressure before the buyer has even closed acquisition number one.
The right question is not just: “Where do I want to be in five years?”
It is also: “What structure gives me the best chance to close and operate the first deal well?”
This week’s edition breaks down the major ETA models, how they differ, and how their economics typically work. Worth reading if you are evaluating entrepreneurship through acquisition, raising capital for a search, or thinking about which acquisition model actually fits your strategy.
Most ETA deals have a real estate issue. Even when no real estate is being acquired.
Many buyers assume real estate only matters when the property is part of the transaction.
In reality, occupancy and control issues show up in a surprising number of deals.
Common examples include:
• lease assignment restrictions
• landlord consent requirements
• zoning and permit issues
• occupancy rights
• related-party lease arrangements
• below-market rent that inflates EBITDA
The business may have operated successfully for years. Then diligence starts.
The transaction introduces enough scrutiny, lender review, and operational friction for those issues to surface.
What initially looks like a real estate issue often becomes a financing issue, a valuation issue, or a closing issue.
Real estate problems rarely stay in the property bucket. They tend to spread throughout the transaction.
https://lnkd.in/e48RDCV8
Most buyers don’t realize how weak the target company’s contracts are until after LOI.
A surprising number of lower middle market businesses operate on:
▪️unsigned agreements
▪️outdated templates
▪️poorly documented email modifications
▪️customer relationships that evolved beyond the scope of the written contract
Even where properly executed agreements exist, many:
▪️prohibit assignment without consent
▪️contain vague indemnification language
▪️lack meaningful limitation-of-liability protections
▪️fail to clearly address payment mechanics or dispute procedures
Weak contracts can slow financing and delay closing, but the bigger issue is usually operational.
One issue that shows up frequently in ETA deals involves the transferability of key customer contracts. Buyers often assume those relationships move with the business automatically. In many cases, they do not.
Certain agreements require:
▪️counterparty consent
▪️advance notice
▪️financial disclosures
▪️renegotiation before assignment
That can delay closing or create immediate customer risk post-close. The diligence process is not just about validating financial performance. Buyers also need to assess which contractual issues may create operational friction, revenue disruption, or legal exposure after closing.
If you are in an active deal and want to better understand the target company’s contracts, or if you recently closed and want to clean up legacy agreements, the below link provides an overview of common contract issues.
https://lnkd.in/eAPEMvTr
Ben MurrayThe SaaS CFO | The #1 source for SaaS finance education. Video lessons, content,Bb2b_services, it_services50+35K2d ago CFO's, are you tracking token usage by customer? It's time to dust off the statistics textbooks.
I'm creating…›
AI ReadBen Murray owns the SaaS finance education lane — his 500+ finance leader community is the real asset here, not the fractional CFO work. That audience skews toward operators and investors trying to underwrite SaaS businesses, which overlaps cleanly with Russell's PE/search buyer base evaluating software roll-ups or add-ons. He posts consistently and is clearly building a course business, not just broadcasting. The sharpest angle: Russell can bring the buy-side QoE perspective to Ben's "ARR and retention hide more than they reveal" thread — that's exactly the diligence gap SearchLoop addresses at the deal origination layer, before the data room even opens.
Recent posts50
CFO's, are you tracking token usage by customer? It's time to dust off the statistics textbooks.
I'm creating the next lesson for my AI metrics course. This lesson focuses on AI margins and AI subscription pricing.
If you are offering AI on a subscription basis, you must understand the usage patterns and your distribution curve.
With this data in hand, you can model pricing and margins. What cohort of customers is providing margin, and what cohort is destroying margin?
You need customer usage by month. And what models are being used, and the model cost. Then you can run some interesting analysis.
We've got to get our new AI financial framework ready for 2027 planning.
#SaaS
Most junior associates can build a model, Claude aside. Far fewer can tell whether the numbers going into it are real.
That's the gap I hope to close with a new hands-on program, specifically for software deals, where "ARR," "retention," and "gross margin" all hide more than they reveal.
This is a case study driven with data room docs. You'll work a full deal end-to-end: reconcile reported vs. real ARR, classify a revenue mix, test margin quality, and write the IC memo. One case study, start to finish.
For IB and PE associates moving into software. Launching soon.
Follow along or comment below, and I'll send you the waitlist form.
#SaaS
My AI Metrics course is now captioned in Brazilian Portuguese.
Well, at least I hope it is. Claude, don't let me down.
I had a request this week from a company in Brazil. If you'd like any other languages, just let me know!
Overview of the Course:
Module 1: AI Economics for Software Operators Intro
- The 4 Layers of AI Work Measurement
- What's Coming Next in the Lessons
- AI Finance Readiness Quiz
Module 2: The 6th Pillar: AI Economics for Software Operators & CFOs
- Why AI Changes the SaaS P&L
- What's Included in AI COGS
- AI Unit Economics
- Pricing AI Without Destroying Margin
- The Board-Ready AI Economics Dashboard
Module 3: AI Metrics Deep Dive
- Inference Efficiency Ratio
- More coming soon!
You can learn more here: https://lnkd.in/eUwCEz-Q
#SaaS
Usage pricing is nothing new. But if your product is powered by tokens, the economics are much different.
Pricing models are changing fast. The all-you-can-eat token subscriptions are evolving. Why? Their gross margins were getting destroyed.
Examples: GitHub, Anthropic, Figma, and on and on.
SaaS operators must understand the seismic shift in pricing and how it may impact their product lines.
Read more: https://lnkd.in/erss7a_Z
#SaaS
Just held a live webinar today with Maxio on the AI trap for finance. Despite what socials want you to think about AI use in finance, here's how finance leaders are using AI today.
How do I know this? I formed a private community of 500+ tech finance leaders.
Here's my process for implementing repeatable AI in finance.
Layer 0: Homework + System Design
- Start with the question, workflow, source systems, and target output.
Layer 1: Data Structure
- Build on clean, connected, well-labeled data.
Layer 2: Formulas + Deterministic Output
- Define your metrics, formulas, schedules, and reconciliations.
Layer 3: AI + Repeatable Workflows
- Use AI to explain, summarize, answer questions, and accelerate the process.
How are you using AI in finance and accounting in a repeatable way? Not one-off prompts.
#SaaS
Stephanie McAlaineEngaging with and delivering valued dealmaking and fundraising experiences for MB—496.2K2d ago It's been exciting to tease out a few valuable nuggets from our ground breaking independent sponsor performanc…›
AI ReadRuns the connective tissue of the indie sponsor ecosystem — event series, curated deal summits, and now a landmark 846-deal returns study with UNC's Institute for Private Capital. Her audience *is* Russell's ICP: independent sponsors, LMM GPs, boutique bankers, family offices. Moderate poster (~49 posts, low engagement per post), but the content is high-signal for the community she owns. Best angle: comment on the returns study with deal-side texture — what the underwriting reality looks like versus benchmarked outcomes, drawn from Treis. That's the non-obvious add. Everyone else will congratulate. Russell can interrogate.
Recent posts49
It's been exciting to tease out a few valuable nuggets from our ground breaking independent sponsor performance returns study examining and benchmarking the returns of 846 independent sponsor deals in collaboration with the Institute for Private Capital's Gregory Brown. The full reveal will come in mid June. Meantime, we've shared a few key insights in Houston and Chicago this past week.
Grateful for the partnership of a few key investors and advisors who encouraged us ... maybe challenged is the better word ... to take on this ambitious project. Thank you Grant Kornman Max Dezara Erik Ginsberg Sylvie Gadant
Stay tuned!
Midwest Deal Summit is the ONLY curated LMM deal event open exclusively to GPs, LPs, boutique investment bankers, experienced independent sponsors and select lenders/private credit.
All the deal makers you want to meet, without the distraction of those you don't.
If you're a boutique investment banker - you still have time to get into the meeting scheduler opening later this week. https://lnkd.in/eCkd4ia7
Thanks to our MWDS Outreach Committee:
Erik Dykema
Bonnie Harland
David Acharya
Jason Cunningham
David V. Duke
Kate Faust
Dan Gaspar
TJ Gaul
Kam Kielhorn
Addison K.
Stephen Natali
Jeffrey S. (Jeff) Piper
Scott Seelbach
Michelle Sherlock
Matt Steffen
Brian Boorstein
The Lower Middle Market Dinner Series is on the move .... if you are a lower middle market fund manager, allocator, family office or established independent sponsor we'll see you in NYC on June 16th.
An ENORMOUS accomplishment for lower middle market investors and the SBIC ecosystem of buy out and mezzanine investors putting capital into and growing small businesses across America.
Huge props to our outstanding Government Relations Team as this has been years in the making - no one is more successful on the legislative front - big shout out to the rockstars who I am so proud to work alongside Tonnie Wybensinger Justin Pelletier and our fearless leader Brett Palmer.
Lower middle market activity and deal flow remain strong ... don't miss the Midwest Deal Summit. Join 350+ curated attendees... open exclusively to GPs/LPs/Bankers and Experienced Indie Sponsors.
It's everyone you want to meet without the distractions of those you don't, driving a higher ROI than any other deal event out there. Come and see for yourself.
Small Business Investor Alliance Independent Sponsor Forum
JT FoxxOwn 84 companies and Brands (11 are AI) I Global Investor I Robotics | Mergers &Bdiversified50+22K3d ago What are the odds of making $1 million a year?
Almost nobody does it.
Even in America, IRS based reports sho…›
AI ReadMotivational entrepreneur-turned-deal-promoter with a massive retail audience — coaches, aspiring investors, small business owners — not PE professionals. The celebrity name-dropping and "84 companies" framing signals personal brand monetization more than institutional deal flow. Heavy poster, consistent engagement in the 35–75 reaction range. The only real angle for Russell is the AI-in-business thread — a sharp operator-side comment on what AI deal origination actually requires versus the hype gets visibility with the entrepreneurial crowd adjacent to independent sponsors and search funders who follow this type of content. Don't expect peer-level dialogue; treat it as top-of-funnel exposure to aspirational buyers.
Recent posts50
What are the odds of making $1 million a year?
Almost nobody does it.
Even in America, IRS based reports show that less than 1% of people earn $1 million or more in a year.
So the question is not:
Can you make $1 million a year?
The better question is:
What skill gives you the best odds?
I have been making $1 million a year since I was 24.
But the lesson is not how I did it.
The lesson is how you should think if you want a real shot at it.
Most people ask the wrong questions.
What business should I start?
What product should I sell?
What niche should I pick?
The better question is:
What skill is the market about to desperately need that very few people can actually do?
Right now, I believe there are 3.
1. AI Implementers
Companies do not need more AI talk.
They need people who can walk in, find the leaks, fix the follow up, improve operations, reduce wasted time, and turn AI into real business results.
2. AI Employee Designers
The next wave is not just using AI.
It is designing AI employees and agents that do the work.
Sales.
Follow up.
Customer support.
Content.
Recruiting.
Admin.
Operations.
If you can help a company save $100,000, $500,000, or $1 million a year, what are you worth?
3. Trades
HVAC.
Plumbing.
Electrical.
The world still needs people who can fix, build, wire, repair, install, and solve real problems.
Now combine trades with AI, better marketing, better follow up, better quoting, better scheduling, and better operations.
That is not just a trade business.
That is an AI powered service company.
Making $1 million a year is rare.
But the odds get better when you stop chasing hype and start chasing demand.
AI solves expensive problems.
AI employees solve expensive problems.
Trades solve expensive problems.
Want to do it with me?
Link in the comments.
Which one gives people the best odds?
AI Implementer, AI Employee Designer, or Trades?
#AI #Entrepreneurship #Millionaire #BusinessGrowth
The Secret to Investing?
There is no secret.
Most people think investing is about finding the next hot stock, timing the market, or getting lucky.
It’s not.
The greatest investors in the world mastered something much harder:
Patience.
The ability to stay calm while everyone else is emotional.
The ability to hold while others panic.
The ability to think long term while the world obsesses over overnight success.
In the early stages, you are not investing in a company.
You are investing in people.
Their character.
Their obsession.
Their ability to solve problems.
Their willingness to keep going when nobody believes in them.
Later on, the game changes.
You are investing in the founder’s ability to pivot, adapt, double down, and survive pressure.
Because markets change.
Technology changes.
Consumers change.
And the founders who win are usually the ones who can evolve the fastest without losing conviction.
The biggest returns in my life did not come from chasing hype.
They came from believing early, staying patient, and giving great people enough time to compound.
Most investors quit too early.
Most founders give up too soon.
Most people underestimate what 10 years of consistency can become.
What do you believe is the #1 trait of a great investor?
#Investing #WealthBuilding #WarrenBuffett #LongTermThinking
AI Employee Designers and AI Implementers may be the best business opportunity in the world right now.
The companies that know how to build AI employees, AI agents, and AI systems are going to dominate the next 5 years.
Right now, businesses everywhere are trying to figure out the same thing:
How do we use AI to make more money, save more time, reduce overhead, automate repetitive work, and scale faster without hiring more people?
That is where AI Implementers and AI Employee Designers come in.
And here is why this opportunity is exploding:
Most business owners know they need AI.
Almost none of them know how to actually implement it.
Inside our own companies, we are building AI employees, AI agents, AI workflows, and AI departments that operate 24/7.
Not only are we using it ourselves, we are helping other companies do the same thing.
The demand is becoming massive.
Businesses are paying huge premiums to people who can:
1. Create AI employees
2. Build AI agents
3. Automate operations
4. Increase productivity
5. Reduce staffing costs
6. Improve customer response times
And the craziest part?
NO EXPERIENCE NECESSARY.
You do not need to be a coder.
You do not need a tech background.
You simply need to understand how to apply AI inside real businesses.
You can learn how to implement AI into your own business or build an entire business helping others do it.
I truly believe this is becoming one of the highest paid and most valuable business skills in the modern economy.
If you want me to show you how we are doing it, and how you can do it yourself or as a business, check the link in the comments.
#AI #AIEmployee #AIAgent #AIImplementer
AI does not replace great people.
AI exposes weak people.
High performers love credibility because it scales trust.
Low performers hate accountability because it scales the truth.
Here is what nobody wants to admit:
If your team is solid, AI becomes an amplifier.
Faster execution
Cleaner handoffs
Fewer mistakes
More time back for leadership
If your team is weak, AI becomes a spotlight.
Vague tasks get rejected
Missed deadlines get logged
“I thought you meant…” disappears
Excuses die when proof is required
That is why the loudest fear around AI is rarely “job loss.”
It is “performance transparency.”
The winners are already using AI like an internal compliance monitor:
it enforces SOPs, demands proof, and escalates before the founder gets dragged into cleanup.
If that makes someone uncomfortable, good.
Discomfort is the sound of standards returning.
Question: If you installed an AI compliance layer tomorrow, who on your team would level up - and who would get exposed?
The picture of me dying while filming a Hollywood movie
#Leadership #Operations #ArtificialIntelligence #Accountability
I remember growing up watching Wayne Gretzky.
Now I’ve had the privilege of spending time with people like Tom Brady, Jack Nicklaus, Phil Jackson, Lionel Messi, and Gretzky himself.
One thing Wayne told me changed how I looked at success forever.
“You can’t become the best unless the people around you understand the sacrifice it takes to become the best.”
He said during hockey season, his family knew he was all in.
Everything was hockey.
Eat.
Sleep.
Breathe.
Repeat.
That hit me hard because most entrepreneurs are trying to build extraordinary lives while surrounded by people committed to average ones.
People say life is about compromise.
I disagree.
Life is about becoming who you were meant to become.
Too many people sacrifice their dreams just to make other people comfortable.
If your ambition makes someone uncomfortable, that’s their insecurity talking.
The truth?
It’s already hard enough to win.
It’s even harder when the people closest to you don’t believe in the mission.
You cannot drive an F1 car at 227 MPH while doubting yourself every turn.
The same applies to business, leadership, speaking, sales, AI, entrepreneurship, or greatness in any form.
Most people stop dreaming early.
They settle.
Then they try to convince you to settle too.
Misery loves company.
But greatness loves obsession.
I never imagined as a kid I’d one day be on the ice with Gretzky, sharing stages with world champions, billionaires, and icons.
The sacrifice was never easy.
Still isn’t.
But it’s worth it every single day.
Because when you truly love what you do, it stops feeling like work.
So if you want to become the best:
Get people on board with your vision.
And if they can’t support your growth, they should not have front row seats to your future.
#Millionaire #Mindset #Winning #Inspire
Brent BeshoreFounder and CEO at Permanent EquityA—50+19K4d ago New essay on unexpected friendships, messy dinner tables, and the value of inefficiency.…›
AI ReadPermanent Equity's founder is the closest thing the independent sponsor world has to a public intellectual — his audience skews heavily toward patient-capital operators, search funders, and small-business acquirers who distrust financial engineering. That's exactly Russell's buyer. He's a near-daily poster with strong engagement, though the data here shows post duplication artifacts. The sharpest angle: Beshore preaches anti-leverage, long-hold philosophy — Russell can engage from the deal origination side, showing how better sourcing infrastructure actually *enables* that patience by reducing competitive pressure to overpay on the few deals you see.
Recent posts50
New essay on unexpected friendships, messy dinner tables, and the value of inefficiency.
New essay on unexpected friendships, messy dinner tables, and the value of inefficiency.
New essay on unexpected friendships, messy dinner tables, and the value of inefficiency.
New essay on unexpected friendships, messy dinner tables, and the value of inefficiency.
Ash Marsh and I shared Main Street Summit with the folks at FDE. I continue to personally learn God loves a heart of repentance. It’s a huge part of my walk in life and with my amazing wife. Hope this adds value! Thanks Brent Beshore and team for amazing events like Main St. you guys are a blessing!
Jordan Selleck51 Labs | 51 Vets | 9 IRONMANs | 20 Marathons | Married + 4 kids | Minivan OwnerB—50+21K4d ago Big thank you to White Oak Fund Services, LLC for stepping up as an accounting services corporate partner to s…›
AI ReadPE marketing agency founder who's built genuine credibility inside the PE/search ecosystem — his 51 Labs client base and "Investors & Operators" podcast audience are exactly the GPs, portco operators, and independent sponsors Russell wants visibility with. Active poster, consistent cadence, mix of personal narrative and PE-adjacent insight. Best angle: Russell engages on the deal origination / pipeline-building posts (like the CalPERS prep piece) with a buyer-side counterpoint on how PE firms actually source vs. how they present to LPs — the gap between the two is where SearchLoop lives.
Recent posts50
Big thank you to White Oak Fund Services, LLC for stepping up as an accounting services corporate partner to support 51 Vets.
Founded by Joseph Bondarenko, White Oak brings decades of experience in private equity fund administration, outsourced CFO services, and institutional fund operations to private equity clients of all sizes.
Joe and his team are deeply committed to service and community impact, including support of the September 11th Memorial & Museum and 51 Vets. We are proud to partner with White Oak - a team that believes success means giving back.
Mike Silva on the early days of his career:
→ Borrowing against future commissions
→ Watching his bank account drain
→ Going deeper into debt every month
→ Trying to convince people to trust him before he'd ever closed a deal
He kept building his pipeline anyway.
One Sacramento listing later — lowest cap rate, highest price per square foot in the area — his career took off.
Takeaway:
Persistence matters most when nobody is validating you yet.
Anyone can stay motivated after a win.
The harder skill is to keep going when there's zero proof it's working.
In the early stages of any career or company, that's exactly where you are.
Putting in effort before the returns show up.
Building relationships, skills, and credibility before the market rewards you for it.
It’s a good reminder that success is rarely linear.
Sometimes the only thing between you and the breakthrough is staying in the game long enough for the work to compound.
Full episode with Miguel Silva:
https://lnkd.in/e-VB3vps
#InvestorsAndOperators #PrivateEquity #EmergingManagers
*How Private Equity Hires Special Ops Veterans for Chief of Staff Roles*
▸ Why Portcos Need a Chief of Staff
▸ Military Speed as a PE Advantage
▸ The Military-to-Civilian Shift
▸ Translating Military Skills Into Business
Andrew Nelson is Chief of Staff to the CEO at Waste Eliminator, where he helps drive strategic initiatives, operational execution, and growth across the company's expanding footprint in the Southeast. Before entering the private sector, Andrew spent six years in the Army with 3rd Ranger Battalion, completing five deployments across Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan. He transitioned from the military in 2022 and later earned his MBA from Emory University.
Andrew is a member of 51 Vets 501c3, a non-profit that supports transitioning veterans from elite military communities on a trajectory to become the next private sector leaders in investment banking, private equity, venture capital, consulting, and defense tech.
500 members
75% have an MBA or currently pursuing
50 members are currently looking for jobs and internships
Hit me up if you want to learn about Chief of Staff talent like Andrew!
You're not supposed to do anything the day before a Ironman race except relax and do minimal walking. Our Jacksonville trip with the 👧👦👶👶 was going to be different 🎉
2am arrival Friday in the minivan
4am crying twins in hotel room
6am take kids outside so Jing Li could sleep
Complete athlete check-in
Take kids to park
Hand off kids then do bike check-in
Dinner
Bed by 10
7 miles walking by EOD 🤣
Saturday
4:30a eat in the dark while family sleeps
7:30a swim start
Swim 2.4 miles in 1 hour 🏊♂️
Transition
Bike 112 miles in 7 hours 🚴♂️
Transition
Run 26.2 miles in 6 hours 15 min 🏃♂️
15 hours in the Florida sun
I absolutely broke down at mile 10 of the run when I saw the family.
No pain. Just cooked.
Balling my eyes out from the weight of the day. It was too much to handle.
After a few minutes, I gathered myself and kissed the family, then kept trucking along. Today was definitely not going to be a PR.
My longest training rides should've been 3-4 hours...I could only get in 90 minutes.
No training week was more than 6 hours, if that. Reality is that too much was happening with family and business.
After beating myself up on the course, I looked the shirt I had on, "1% Better." The motto from Chris Nikic, who is the first person with Down Syndrome to do an Ironman.
I didn't need to set a personal record.
We, as a family, just needed to show up and get 1% better that day.
It's mental health awareness month. If something feels off, just focus on ONE thing to get a little bit better every day 🙏
None of this would be possible without the love and support of Jing Li ❤️
Miguel Silva at CalPERS meets 200+ managers a year. He says the number who come fully prepped is very low.
Not because the information is hard to find.
Because managers are short-staffed, stretched thin, and treating big LPs as long shots anyway.
Which means the ones who do show up prepared stand out immediately.
The research takes maybe a couple of hours:
✓ Read the CalPERS’ AB 890 report (last 4 years of commitments)
✓ Watch one investment committee meeting on YouTube
✓ Find the gap in their portfolio your strategy fills
A couple of hours. For a meeting that could take years off your fundraising timeline.
🎬 Full conversation: https://lnkd.in/dKwHniae
#InvestorsAndOperators #MergersAcquisitionsDivestitures #EmergingManagers
John KoeppelPrivate Equity / Independent Sponsor Leader at Lippes Mathias LLPA—50+6.3K3d ago Congratulations to the Enceladus Partners team - thrilled to see another successful investment close ! Russ S…›
AI ReadConnector-lawyer at the center of the independent sponsor ecosystem — his feed is a live map of who's closing deals, raising capital, and building platforms in the LMM. Russell's real prize here isn't Koeppel himself but the comment sections: active iSponsors, family offices, and capital providers who engage on every post. Heavy poster, consistent cadence, mix of deal announcements, market commentary, and event promotion. Best angle: add deal-side texture to his independent sponsor trend posts — sourcing friction, deal flow quality, or roll-up origination math from the buyer's seat.
Recent posts50
Congratulations to the Enceladus Partners team - thrilled to see another successful investment close ! Russ Spieler John McKee Joshua Bucher #familyoffice #deal #closing
Why is the direct investing model transforming private equity? ✳️ experienced deal makers are leaving PE / investment banking / consulting and launching their own independent sponsor firms
✳️ roughly 75% of isponsor deals are in the lower middle market (LMM) with enterprise values of $10 million - $75 million.
✳️ these targeted LMM companies (often founder / family owned under $10 million EBITDA) are the sweet spot for most isponsor deals -> offering opportunities for outsized returns through professionalization and organic / strategic growth.
✳️ success is based on finding attractive deals on a proprietary / semi-proprietary basis, coupled with the isponsor’s own industry expertise (and/or that of their operating partner, CEO sourced for the opportunity, etc).
✳️ robust capital network of SBICs, family offices, UHNWs, and HNWs provide the capital for these deals. The ability to underwrite a specific deal is a huge attraction, alongside the alignment of interest created in the isponsor / investor waterfall.
✳️ the direct “deal by deal” structure also allows extensive flexibility, including deciding to structure as Qualified Small Business Stock (QSBS) -> and reap the extensive federal / state capital gains tax benefits
✳️ essential for the isponsor to choose the right trusted advisors (legal, accounting, etc) familiar with independent sponsor deal structures and related nuances. Inquire as to the number of isponsor deals they have closed, the depth of their team, the value prop they offer, etc
✳️ see attached article for a comparison of investing by committed PE, independent sponsors and family offices
✅ as always, please feel free to reach out for complimentary brainstorming on latest PE / isponsor direct trends. Lippes Mathias LLP is honored to be ranked a “leading law firm” in the PE direct / independent sponsor space (1 of only 3 firms to be so ranked). We have a dedicated team of 32 attorneys supporting our clients’ direct deals, offering latest insights on market terms and tax efficient structures, providing a fantastic value proposition (often meaningfully lower cost than our direct competitors), and making complimentary connections to capital and others in our robust network. #independentsponsor #direct #familyoffice #privateequity #deal #directdeal #dealbydeal #QSBS Ed Stubbings Louise Obadia Roger Kowalski Stephanie McAlaine Ron Lippock
Looking forward to reconnecting with the independent sponsor community in Dallas on June 11th ! If you are an independent sponsor seeking the latest insights and looking to make the best equity / debt connections to fund your next deal, no bigger and better place than in Texas. #independentsponsor iGlobal Forum Louise Obadia Roger Kowalski Steve Brown Hannah Dolan
Thrilled to continue to expand our award winning deal team - especially with Lippes Mathias LLP’s continued exceptional growth in Florida! Welcome aboard Matthew Brust - look forward to introducing you to a number of our fast growing private equity / independent sponsor clients.
Independent Sponsors are experiencing major breakthroughs according to Global Emerging Manager Institute’s webinar with Founder Ed Stubbings and John Koeppel of Lippes Mathias LLP.
The Independent Sponsor model has become a credible launch path for operators, investors, and sector specialists who can source high-quality deals and raise capital around specific opportunities.
The market has changed. A decade ago, going deal-by-deal often meant convincing a small group of co-investment investors to make an exception. Today, there is a deeper ecosystem of family offices, SBICs, private capital providers, and other sponsors willing to back direct deals.
But the bar is also higher.
The best Independent Sponsors are not showing up with vague ambition. They are showing up with a thesis, a network, a sourcing edge, and a clear view of where they can win.
ICYMI, here are a few sharp takeaways:
🔷 Do not launch without a plan - The strongest Sponsors know their sector, their investor audience, their personal runway, and the kind of deals they should avoid. The advice was simple: know thyself before asking the market to back you.
🔷 Your first deal matters more than your biggest idea - Going from zero to one is the hardest step. The best first deal is often not the flashiest. It is usually understandable, financeable, and supported by a real operating angle. A good deal is not always a good Independent Sponsor deal.
🔷 Legal planning starts before you leave - Anyone coming out of a PE firm, bank, or operating role needs to understand potential restrictive covenants, non-solicits, investor limitations, and separation terms before making a move. It is never too early to plan, but it can be too late.
🔷 Flexibility is the model’s superpower - Sponsors can pursue opportunities deal by deal, bring in operating partners selectively, form co-sponsor relationships, warehouse smaller assets, or build around a committed family office relationship. There is no single route to success.
ISN's takeaway: Independent Sponsorship is not just “fundless private equity.” It is a more flexible, more transparent way to build an investment platform - but only if the sponsor is disciplined enough to pick the right first deal and thoughtful enough to build for the long term.
Sue DownesCEO and Co-Founder of MyEyeDr.Aoptometry, healthcare50+13K4d ago Summer is a season when many people think about sunglasses as a style choice. In reality, they are an importan…›
AI ReadSue Downes built the largest optometry MSO in the country from scratch — her audience is exactly the DSO/MSO operator crowd Russell wants SearchLoop in front of, plus the PE sponsors and growth equity folks who've backed or studied her model. She posts consistently but lightly (50 posts, modest engagement outside brand moments), meaning the comment section isn't crowded. Best angle: the roll-up infrastructure question — what made MyEyeDr.'s deal sourcing repeatable at scale, and how that problem looks different now with AI in the stack.
Recent posts50
Summer is a season when many people think about sunglasses as a style choice. In reality, they are an important part of protecting long-term eye health.
Quality sunglasses do more than complete a look. They help reduce UV exposure, limit glare, and lower the risk of conditions like cataracts and other sun-related eye damage. Whether you are driving, traveling, or simply spending more time outdoors, sunglasses are an important part of protecting your vision every day.
MyEyeDr. offers sunglasses with the right protection and options to fit your needs and personal style. Stop by today to find the right pair for you!
#LifeAtMyEyeDr. #EyeHealth #Sunglasses #UVProtection #VisionCare #Leadership
A few great days in New York with the team.
I always leave moments like this feeling grateful for the people around me and excited about what we’re building together.
We had the chance to preview some incredible brands and styles coming to select MyEyeDr. locations this summer, including Cartier, LINDBERG, Saint Laurent, and Gucci. So many beautiful collections, fresh trends, and exciting things ahead.
Every decision we make is really about the people we serve. It is about offering eyewear that feels special, supports great vision, and gives people something they are proud to wear.
#LifeAtMyEyeDr. #Eyewear #LuxuryEyewear #VisionCare #NewYork
It’s easy to overlook your eyes until your vision starts to change.
Routine eye exams help you stay ahead of changes you may not see or feel yet. It’s a simple investment in your long-term eye health.
I get it. If you can see clearly, it’s easy to assume everything is fine. But it’s proven that those small, consistent check-ins can reveal far more than your vision, from early signs of glaucoma to indicators of diabetes and high blood pressure.
During Healthy Vision Month, it’s worth remembering that staying ahead of what you can’t see yet is one of the best things you can do for your health. An hour once a year is a worthwhile investment.
#LifeAtMyEyeDr. #EyeCare #EyeExam #EyeHealth
Summer is when people finally refresh the sunglasses they’ve been wearing on repeat.
I’m no different. There’s something about stepping into the sun with a fresh pair of sunglasses that makes you feel more put together.
But the best pairs don’t just look good. They fit well, feel comfortable, and actually support how you spend your time outside.
This is the season where eyewear becomes part of how you experience everything around you. The right pair completes your look and changes how the day feels.
#LifeAtMyEyeDr. #Eyewear #Sunglasses
The Maui Jim Sunglasses ʻOkina in Shiny Dark Havana just landed exclusively at MyEyeDr.
I’ve always valued partnerships that deliver real quality. This frame brings classic rectangular style and Hawaiian Native pattern details together with PolarizedPlus2 lens technology. That means clear, glare-free vision that makes every moment outside better.
What sets MyEyeDr. apart is our focus on bringing you exclusive options like this. Trusted brands. Advanced lenses. A shopping experience built around what works for you. Good partners let us deliver that every day.
#LifeAtMyEyeDr. #MauiJim #Eyewear #Sunglasses #EyeCare #Partnerships
AJ BrownExecutive Chairman & Co-CEO at Apex Service PartnersAtrades, hvac485.7K4d ago For the past 7 years, I've been fortunate enough to build Apex alongside some of the most talented, committed …›
AI ReadAJ Brown runs the largest HVAC roll-up in the US by deal count — his audience is exactly the operator-investor crossover Russell needs: PE-backed trades executives, search funders eyeing HVAC, and independent sponsors benchmarking against Apex's model. Posts 48 times with solid engagement on culture and veteran-angle content, but almost zero deal/thesis commentary — the strategic layer is conspicuously absent. That's Russell's opening: bring the buy-side infrastructure angle (sourcing velocity, deal origination at scale) into a conversation AJ's audience clearly wants but isn't getting from him.
Recent posts48
For the past 7 years, I've been fortunate enough to build Apex alongside some of the most talented, committed people I've ever met .
Somewhere along the way, we stopped being just colleagues. We became teammates and friends. Real ones. The kind who show up not just for the wins, but for the hard days too. The kind who care as much about the mission as you do, maybe even more.
At our core, Team Apex is not just a company, but a team committed to something bigger than any of us. Transforming the trades. Building a business the right way. Taking care of the people who make it all possible.
So today, when I say we're welcoming Apollo Global Management, Inc. and Munesh Advani as a partner, we view it as adding a new teammate. One who shares our values, believes in our mission, and wants to help us keep going down the same path we've always been on.
Good news about our mission? It doesn't have an end. Transforming an industry is a forever mission, and honestly, that's what gets me out of bed every day.
To my Apex teammates: this milestone is yours. Thank you for everything that made it possible. We're just getting started.
#JustGettingStarted #TransformTheTrades Apex Service Partners
Hello all, we are looking for a talented corporate paralegal who can specialize in trade licensing. If you think you would be a good fit for this position, please let me know via messaging.
Celebrating Women’s History Month
Women are making powerful strides in the skilled trades. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the number of women working as HVAC technicians and installers has more than doubled since 2017, rising from 1.4 percent of the workforce to three percent. This growth shows that industry-wide efforts to support and recruit women are creating real momentum.
This month, we’re spotlighting three remarkable women who helped open doors for future generations. We also honor the many women technicians and leaders whose hard work continues to elevate our industry every day.
Here’s to the women who build, innovate, and lead. 💪✨
#WomensHistoryMonth #ApexServicePartners #ElevatingTheTrades #TransformingTechniciansLives
Honoring Our Heroes This Veterans Day
At Apex Service Partners, nearly 70% of our leadership team proudly served in the military, and their commitment to service continues in everything we do.
Being mission driven is more than a mindset, it's our foundation. We are passionate about supporting veteran organizations and helping transitioning veterans find purpose and opportunity in the trades.
Today, we are proud to spotlight just a few of the incredible veterans who make Apex stronger every day. Thank you for your service, your leadership, and your continued impact.
#VeteransDay #ApexServicePartners #ElevatingTheTrades #TransformingTechniciansLives
Ian Peoples James H. Christopher Wurst Matt Lommel Clifford Walker Johann Hindert Bryce Woodring Chris Linnel Alex Hooper Ken Rowe Morgan Jordan Bryan Vavruska Jack Ambridge Bartek Czarnik
Honoring Service. Celebrating Purpose
Apex Service Partners is proud to be recognized as a Top Veteran-Friendly Employer by U.S. Veterans Magazine a distinction that led to a special feature on one of our own, Regional President Brad Kelly.
In the article, Brad reflects on his inspiring journey from serving in the U.S. Army to leading with purpose at Apex. His story is a powerful reminder of the impact of having a mission and the fulfillment that comes from being part of something greater than yourself. He shares, "We’ve built a community here that is mission-driven," one that looks out for each other and offers veterans more than just a career. For many, it’s a new home.
Read the full article below and discover how purpose-driven leadership continues to shape our culture.
#USVeteransMagazine #ApexServicePartners #ElevatingTheTrades #TransformingTechniciansLives
https://lnkd.in/gAZws4B3
Jamie DavidsonM&A Advisor & Deal Strategist | Built, Scaled & Exited the Businesses I Now AdviA—50+13K1w ago This company has 150 years of brand equity, a fresh 2024 rebrand and is in a market growing at ~9% CAGR.
Proj…›
AI ReadOperator-turned-advisor running sell-side mandates for LMM founders into PE — his audience is exactly the buyer pool SearchLoop serves. Posts consistently, maybe 3-4x/week, mixing deal teasers with market-intelligence takes that get modest but targeted engagement. The non-obvious angle: his vintage fund post (2017 vs. 2023 capital) is a live conversation about buyer quality that Russell can extend from the origination side — how AI-sourced deal flow intersects with which funds actually have deployment pressure right now.
Recent posts50
This company has 150 years of brand equity, a fresh 2024 rebrand and is in a market growing at ~9% CAGR.
Project Heritage is a rare find: two premium mixer brands with proven distribution, 25%+ margins, and real shelf presence.
Contact Cameron to request an NDA and get additional details: cburress@sellsidegroup.com
If you have not sold a business in the last 18 months, you have no idea how much diligence has changed.
Per the KPMG 2026 M&A Outlook, 76 percent of dealmakers now use AI in their due diligence process. Per Deloitte, 86 percent of dealmakers have integrated generative AI into their M&A workflow, with 65 percent of those doing it in just the past year. 83 percent expect AI to drive their post-merger integration plans.
What this looks like on the buyer side is something every seller should understand.
A buyer's analyst no longer spends three weeks reading your data room. They run AI agents against your contracts, financials, and customer files.
The system surfaces every clause that does not match market standard. Every revenue recognition policy that looks aggressive.
Every supplier concentration that exceeds threshold. Every customer agreement with a change-of-control trigger. Every off-cycle expense in your P&L.
What used to take an analyst a month to find now gets surfaced in 48 hours.
For founders, this is a double-edged sword.
On the good side, diligence moves faster.
Deals that should close, close sooner. Buyers can underwrite with more conviction. Information gaps that used to kill deals can sometimes get bridged.
On the hard side, your messy data room is no longer hidden by sheer volume.
Every inconsistency between your P&L and your customer contracts will get found. Every gap between what your sales team is selling and what your master service agreements actually say will surface. Every related-party transaction shows up.
Your data room is now your sales pitch. Build it like one.
Reconcile your contracts to your revenue. Document your customer concentration honestly. Surface your add-backs before they get found. Get a sell-side QoE before the buyer's AI does its own.
The era of "we will explain that in management presentations" is over.
If it is in your data room, it is in the model. If it is not in your data room, the buyer assumes the worst.
Prepare for the way buyers actually work now, not the way they worked five years ago.
#MergersAndAcquisitions #ArtificialIntelligence #DueDiligence #PrivateEquity #BusinessExit #LowerMiddleMarket #DealMaking
A founder I am working with right now is in late-stage talks with a PE-backed strategic. The buyer is great. The price is fair. The strategic logic is real.
I asked one question that changed the temperature of the conversation.
Which fund is the capital coming from? The 2017 vintage or the 2023?
The answer matters more than most sellers realize.
Per Akin Gump, 16 percent of all PE exits now go through GP-led continuation vehicles. These structures used to be niche. They are not anymore.
More than 70 portfolio companies were transferred to continuation funds in 2025, up from 54 the year before. Almost three quarters of the largest PE firms in the world have done at least one.
Here is what that means in plain English.
When a PE fund hits the end of its life and has portfolio companies it does not want to sell at current valuations, the GP can move those companies into a new vehicle, often run by the same GP, with new LPs. The asset never actually changes hands in the operating sense. Same management. Same thesis. New paper.
For a founder selling INTO a PE-backed buyer right now, this is critical context. If the platform acquiring you sits in an aging fund with no clear exit path, you are not just signing onto a five year thesis. You are signing onto a structure that may need to extend, refinance, or transfer the asset before you ever see the back end of your earnout or rollover equity.
If you are taking rollover equity, ask what happens to your position in a continuation vehicle scenario. Ask about pre-emptive rights. Ask about drag-along treatment. Ask about how independent the valuation will be.
The best PE buyers will answer these questions cleanly. The ones who dodge them are telling you something.
Selling to PE is not selling to PE anymore. It is selling to a specific fund, with a specific vintage, with a specific liquidity situation.
Know which one.
#PrivateEquity #MergersAndAcquisitions #LowerMiddleMarket #ContinuationFunds #DealStructure #BusinessExit #DealMaking
There is $3.7 trillion of committed PE capital sitting on the sidelines right now. Record high. Roughly double what it was five years ago.
Most founders read that headline and assume it means buyers are everywhere paying premiums.
The reality is more interesting.
That capital is heavily concentrated. The top 20 PE managers hold over 600 billion of it.
Those funds chase deals above 250 million in enterprise value where multiples regularly clear 11x EBITDA. The competition at that level is brutal and the pricing reflects it.
Drop down into the lower middle market, deals in the 25 to 100 million range, and the math looks completely different.
Per GF Data, those businesses trade at 6 to 8x EBITDA. Same economy. Same capital cycle. Three to five turns of multiple lower.
The arbitrage is real and it hides in plain sight.
For founders in the lower middle market, the implication is huge. Multiple expansion is not a strategy you can rely on. Growth is.
The premium does not come from where the market sits when you sell. It comes from how much EBITDA you can put on the table when you do.
For buyers in the lower middle market, the implication is even bigger. The capital advantage that lets a mega fund buy at 12x and still hit returns simply does not exist at this end of the market.
Underwriting has to be sharper. Operational improvement has to be real. The thesis cannot rely on multiple expansion alone.
The market is hot at the top and selective everywhere else.
Knowing which side of that line your business sits on changes how you should think about every conversation with a buyer.
#PrivateEquity #LowerMiddleMarket #MergersAndAcquisitions #BusinessExit #Valuation #DealMaking #MiddleMarket
Your comment: The flip side: that multiple gap is also why LMM operators who compound EBITDA consistently get disproportionate attention. Scarcity of quality at that price point matters as much as the discount itself.
This is a huge opportunity. Reach out if interested (a few intership spots remaining).
Tim ConkleI build, scale, and acquire MSPs | 44 acquisitions and counting | Founder & CEO,Ab2b_services, it_services, msp50+11K2w ago Most people are still talking around the edges of AI. I’m not.
The MSP model is going to change dramatically …›
AI Read44 MSP acquisitions without a PE check — Tim is the rare operator-acquirer who's built a roll-up thesis entirely from inside the industry, using a co-op model as the deal funnel. His audience is dense with MSP owners who are exactly the sell-side targets SearchLoop is built to surface. Heavy poster, consistent cadence, but comment sections are thin — meaning Russell's comments get disproportionate visibility. Best angle: the buy-side infrastructure problem his model quietly exposes — how do you find the next 44 without a systematic origination layer?
Recent posts50
Most people are still talking around the edges of AI. I’m not.
The MSP model is going to change dramatically over the next few years. Some companies will adapt. A lot won’t.
At The 20 MSP SUMMIT, Jeffrey Newton and I are going to talk about the conversations most people in this industry still avoid:
→ what AI replaces
→ what clients will expect next
→ what becomes irrelevant
→ and what the next version of an MSP actually looks like
Not recycled talking points. Not safe answers.
A real discussion about where this industry is headed and what happens next.
Your comment: renewal signal is interesting too. By the time clients ask why basic AI-enabled workflows are not included, the delivery model is already behind.
Everybody keeps talking about AI like knowing about it is enough.
It's not.
Execution wins. Every single time.
That's what SUMMIT is about. Getting in the room with people who are building, growing, making moves, and figuring it out in real time.
Next week is not about theory. It's about what happens when smart leaders get in the same room and push each other to think bigger.
If you're coming, buckle up.
If you're not....you're going to wish you were!
Registration closes TONIGHT: https://hubs.li/Q04gMMVb0
One thing I’ve always liked about this channel is that the best conversations usually happen after the meetings are over.
Over dinner. On a patio somewhere. Random side conversations that turn into big ideas.
Especially right now. AI is changing the space fast and the people who are going to lead the next era of the IT channel are the ones willing to rethink old assumptions and have real conversations about where things are headed.
The people building the future of the channel aren’t guarding information anymore. They’re learning from each other and thinking a lot bigger about what’s possible.
Spent a week in Oahu for Pax8 President’s Council with some really smart people having the kinds of talks that remind you how much opportunity is ahead for those willing to evolve.
Not every MSP will make it into the next chapter of this industry.
That’s just reality.
The winners will be the ones built for scale….operationally disciplined, strategically aligned, and ready for what’s next.
I’m seeing a small group pull away.
Faster growth.
Stronger margins.
Bigger outcomes.
Once separation happens, it gets very hard to catch up.
That window doesn’t stay open forever.
Small decisions create big outcomes.
Who you hire.
What you tolerate.
How quickly you act.
Whether you standardize.
Whether you lead with discipline or emotion.
People think success comes from one big move. Usually, it’s thousands of small right ones made consistently over time.
Big outcomes are built quietly.
Eric JansonGlobal Private Equity & Principal Investors LeaderB—50+7.8K3w ago Just returned from a few energizing days at the Milken Institute Global Conference. The mood was clear: priva…›
AI ReadSenior PwC partner who owns the global PE relationship layer — his audience is fund partners, CFOs, and portfolio ops leaders, exactly the buyer profile Russell needs visibility with. Posts inconsistently (50 posts but engagement is wildly uneven — the OpenAI/CFO agent post at 6K+ reactions is an outlier, most land under 100), meaning he's an authority account, not an algorithm account. Best angle: the AI-in-PE-workflows thread — Russell can add deal origination as the missing upstream layer in the CFO/AI stack conversation.
Recent posts50
Just returned from a few energizing days at the Milken Institute Global Conference. The mood was clear: private capital is not stepping back. It is repositioning for the next era.
AI infrastructure, energy, healthcare, aerospace and defense, and broader infrastructure were at the center of many conversations. These are not just “themes.” They are the investable backbone of where the global economy is heading.
One comment that stuck with me: roughly 50% of what Brookfield owns today is in businesses or sectors that did not exist 15 years ago. That is a powerful reminder of how quickly the opportunity set changes — and how important it is for investors to keep looking forward, not backward.
A few takeaways:
▪️ The US still offers the strongest risk-reward profile in the world. Even with uncertainty, North America remains the market where innovation, capital formation, and scale come together best.
▪️ Real estate may be nearing an important turn. After four difficult years, the setup for recovery is becoming more compelling.
▪️ Europe will continue to face structural challenges, but there are real pockets of opportunity — especially in renewable energy and healthcare.
▪️ Private markets are getting bigger, more global, and more concentrated.
▪️ The possibility of 30 funds reaching $1T+ in AUM over the next 5–10 years says a lot about where capital is flowing and what scale will mean for the industry.
▪️ And yes, liquidity, resilience, and total portfolio thinking are becoming much more central to the conversation. The old silos are breaking down.
Brookfield's Bruce Flatt said it well: “The best is yet to come.”
#MIGlobal #PrivateCapital #PrivateEquity #Infrastructure #AI #Energy #Healthcare #Investing
We're partnering with PwC to help enterprises reimagine the office of the CFO with AI agents built for real finance workflows.
Together, PwC and OpenAI are building agents across planning, forecasting, reporting, procurement, payments, treasury, tax, and close, starting with production work inside the OpenAI finance organization.
These agents can help teams automate repeatable work, connect context across systems, surface risks, and support better decisions with governance and human oversight. OpenAI finance teams have already used tools like Codex to process 5x more contracts with the same-sized team and IR-GPT to manage more than 200 investor interactions during the recent fundraise.
Learn more at the link in the comments below.
It was a great discussion at the Canadian Club Toronto on where private equity goes from here.
What stood out to me is that in this market, long-term value creation matters more than ever. Liquidity will return, but the firms that stand out will be the ones that stay disciplined, stay operationally focused, and keep building through the cycle.
Thank you to Katie Zorbas for moderating such a thoughtful conversation, and to Thomas Choi, Peter Giacomelli, CFA, Afsaneh Lebel and Andrew Walton for the insights and strong reminder that private capital’s best opportunities are often created, not just found.
#PrivateEquity, #PE, #CanadianClubToronto
We’re excited to be hosting our upcoming PwC PE Series: Data in Exit Readiness session in London on Wednesday 13 May.
Designed for Finance and Data leaders in private equity-backed portfolio companies, this session will explore how to harness data to support a successful exit from strengthening your equity story to reducing execution risk and maximising value.
🔍 What we’ll cover:
• Market dynamics and evolving buyer expectations
• The critical role of data in exit readiness
• Building a robust deal model and data foundation
• Key considerations across ESG, cyber, and technology
Join us for breakfast networking from 08:45, followed by an insightful session with PwC specialists and peers.
📍 PwC, 1 Embankment Place, London
🕘 08:45 – 11:00
If you’re interested in attending, please reach out to Isha W. or your PwC contact to register.
#PrivateEquity #ExitReadiness #DataStrategy #DealValue #PwC
Kate Conibere, Isha W., Richard Schofield, Elena Willson, Laura Burkinshaw, Emma Barratt, Gwen Pham, Georgie Bryce, Mike Seaton
Global infrastructure investment is entering a new era.
With spending projected to exceed US$150 trillion through 2050, the scale of demand is simply too large for public budgets to meet alone. That means principal investors, PE funds, Infra funds, and private credit providers will play an increasingly important role in financing the infrastructure buildout ahead.
PwC’s Global Infrastructure Outlook 2025–50 explores where this investment is accelerating and what it means for the future of infrastructure and private capital.
For investors, this is more than a funding gap. It is a long-term opportunity to help shape the next generation of energy, transport, digital, and social infrastructure.
Read more: https://pwc.to/4vF8e3C
#Infrastructure #PrivateCapital
Clara Cutajar, Nicole Wakefield, Agnes Koops-Aukes, J.C. Lapierre, Daryl Walcroft, Jennifer Brake, Josh Smigel, Duncan Cox
Thomas ScavelliFounder and Chief Medical Officer of Veritas Veterinary PartnersAvet, healthcare94153w ago Specialty and emergency veterinary medicine doesn’t happen in isolation. It’s built on shared expertise, trust…›
AI ReadVeteran vet-med consolidator who built and scaled GSVS before launching Veritas — his audience is exactly the operator-turned-platform-builder crowd Russell needs visibility with: clinician founders who've taken PE money, DSO/VMO-adjacent operators, and healthcare roll-up watchers. Light poster — 9 posts with thin engagement (mostly sub-25 reactions, minimal comments) signals a small but high-trust, operationally-focused following. Best angle: the CMO-as-integration-architect framing in his ScribbleVet post opens a natural deal-side thread — Russell can surface how fragmented vet-med deal flow actually gets sourced and why platform CMOs end up owning more of the M&A thesis than their title suggests.
Recent posts9
Specialty and emergency veterinary medicine doesn’t happen in isolation. It’s built on shared expertise, trust between teammates and the systems that allow great clinicians to do their best work.
At Veritas Veterinary Partners, we’re focused on strengthening that foundation so our teams can continue to deliver at the highest level. World Veterinary Day may have passed, but hearing our teammates’ “why” is a reminder of what makes this all possible.
https://lnkd.in/eUE3HqRR
#WhyChooseVeritas #VeritasVeterinaryPartners #VeritasVetPartners #VetMed #VetMedCareers
Across all of our hospitals, one of the threads that tie us together is our commitment to serving the communities in which we work. Many of our hospitals, including Las Vegas Veterinary Specialty Center and Veterinary Emergency + Critical Care, provide pro bono or discounted care for our cities’ working K9s. Our teammates consistently go above and beyond what is expected, and I couldn’t be prouder of how they show up with an endless drive to make a difference.
#WhyChooseVeritas #VeritasVetPartners #ValuesInAction #ValuingOurCommunities #VetMed #VetMedCareers
One of the things I’m most proud of at Veritas Veterinary Partners is that we recognize exceptional care extends beyond exceptional medicine. Supporting clients through grief is one of the most important parts of what we do.
I’m grateful to the team at Pet Emergency & Specialty Center of Marin for creating a space where people can feel less alone during difficult times.
#WhyChooseVeritas #VeritasVetPartners #PESCM #ValuesInAction #ValuingOurPatients
My top priority as chief medical officer is making it easier for doctors at Veritas Veterinary Partners to focus on what matters most: patient care. That’s why we’re rolling out ScribbleVet across our hospitals. By reducing documentation burden and streamlining medical records, this tool helps give time back to our clinicians so they can spend more of it where it belongs: with patients and clients.
#WhyChooseVeritas #VeritasVetPartners #VetMed #VetMedCareers
This #WomensHistoryMonth, I'm reflecting on how fortunate I am to work alongside so many remarkable women at the GSVS family of hospitals. From the operating room to the ICU to the front desk to hospital operations and everywhere in between, they make a real difference for our patients, clients and team every day. I’m grateful for the compassion, skill and leadership they bring to all of the Veritas Veterinary Partners hospitals and to the veterinary profession as a whole.
#WhyChooseVeritas #VeritasVetPartners #VetMed #VetMedCareers
Devan TrammelExperiences Innovation | Stanford MBA | Enlisted VeteranAindustrial, b2b_services50+4.4K1mo ago I've always been down for an adventure... lately it feels a little more literal as I take the helm at Gulf Coa…›
AI ReadChenmark GP-track operator turned platform CEO — his Wind Point background is secondary; the real signal is he just took the helm at Gulf Coast Adventures, meaning he's actively running a Chenmark-style hold-and-operate play right now. That's direct overlap with search funders and independent sponsors in Russell's core audience. Moderate poster — high engagement on personal narrative posts, sparse on deal content. Best angle: the operator-side reality of running a fragmented vertical platform, specifically the sourcing and pipeline bottlenecks that show up once you're actually in the seat.
Recent posts50
I've always been down for an adventure... lately it feels a little more literal as I take the helm at Gulf Coast Adventures this year!
Joining Chenmark right after my MBA was a big bet on what I thought would be a great team, my largest opportunity for growth, and an unlimited amount of agency and ownership.
Beyond thankful for them being just as advertised. I have learned so much since joining, getting real reps in finance, accounting, and M&A from a tremendous team. A lot of failing fast, feedback, and iteration on new skills.
I couldn't be more stoked to move into this position, and eve more appreciative of the team betting on me.
Since joining, one of the most common questions was why small business? My answer has always been, for the opportunity to have an outsized impact on a community.
Now I get to go have that impact on not just any community, but the exact community I come from in Florida.
We're building an adventure and tourism company focused on experiences, the small gems of escape inside your vacation, the ones you talk about forever.
If you're ever in the area, or have ever wanted to visit, please reach out!
Love finance but looking to gain agency and have an outsized impact on an organization?
Ever thought "I wish I worked with an incredible team that is invested in my growth?"
If this sounds like you or you know anyone who would be a great fit, check out this new role based in our Nashville office!
"Oh wow, so a super chill job."
- The most common response I hear when I tell someone what I did in the military.
When I think of Veterans Day, I think of my friends. The girls and guys who always did incredible and sometimes impossible things, with a smile on their faces.
This attitude was sometimes a product of a "life's short" mentality, but more often than not, it's just how they chose to do business.
The only thing better than doing something incredibly hard and taxing is doing it so stoked that it breeds an unstoppable resolve.
I believe it's this exact resolve that makes us such a formidable force.
Happy Veterans Day to all the crazy ones.
The ones who are still having fun doing incredible things, in or out of uniform.
Pictured: One of my Airmen having the time of his life wearing an 80 lb bomb suit in 90º, 90% humidity weather
I’m happy to share that I’m starting a new position as Generalist Vice President at Chenmark !
3 years ago Liam Fangman, James Norwood, and I connected on Reddit.
We had been spending months meeting with MBA adcoms and Veterans Clubs and genuinely thought (and in some cases were told) that there wasn’t much of a path to these programs for Enlisted Veterans.
We shared everything we learned with each other, info sessions, contacts, and come December with a few acceptances under our belt we decided to create what we needed, Enlisted Exfil. We threw a discord and a basic website together, hoping that the next year the next 3 enlisted guys could make use of all of our data and we could serve as mentors.
By the time we actually reached 1 year we had nearly 200 members. It turns out there were a lot more of us lurking than we thought.
We have spent these past 3 years being students, landing jobs, moving cities, and watching this community grow to 475, with 85 current students at every T20 (except MIT, shame on you).
Our secret has been that we've barely done anything. We are an admissions consultant’s worst nightmare (besides the few we partner with).
Members joined, found community, leveraged each other, got accepted, and they come back week after week to help the next generation.
I’ve been using my volunteering time quietly serving as CEO. Focusing our volunteers that aim to do more than just coach, and setting up the strategy for our next phase of growth.
As I enter the next stage of my career and watch MBA admissions drastically change, it’s important for me to recognize where I’m actually useful, and where I’m not.
So I’m really happy to announce, that as of Monday, 15 September I’m handing the reigns over and Jason Rodriguez will become the new CEO of Enlisted Exfil.
Since the moment Jason joined us he was behaving like he was a co-founder. He was asking tough questions to help others grow, he was sharing all of his info even if it meant he had a disadvantage, and he even did our first merch run as a surprise and thank you to us.
I’ve been worried about stepping out for a while now, but he makes this a hell of a lot easier. I’ll stay on the board and focus on continuing to develop our unique fundraising model.
I can’t wait to see where the org goes in the next 3 years with Jason taking the lead, because I know it’s a place I haven’t yet imagined.
If you’d like to support us, partner with us, or are simply one of the amazing people who hype us up on LinkedIn - Jason Rodriguez is your guy
Sitreps 2 Steercos Service to School Warrior-Scholar Project
Steve BiltCEO Smile Brands & Smiles for Everyone Foundation Adental, healthcare50+16K1mo ago Great to share a stage at Henry Schein & Henry Schein One Thrive Live with Fred Lowery & Brian A. Colao
Grea…›
AI ReadOperator of one of the largest DSO platforms in the country — 700+ locations, multiple major acquisitions under his belt — with an audience that skews toward DSO operators, dental PE, and multi-site healthcare investors. Moderate poster, maybe 2-3x/month, but his posts pull real engagement (200+ reactions on the right topics). The Henry Schein Thrive Live post is the entry point — Brian Colao was on that stage, who sits at the center of DSO M&A legal work, meaning Russell's comment there lands in front of exactly the deal-side dental audience SearchLoop is built for. The non-obvious angle: Bilt has lived the integration complexity of roll-up execution (Monarch, Castle Dental) at scale — Russell can engage from the buy-side underwriting lens, specifically on how deal sourcing bottlenecks show up *before* the LOI, not after, which is a gap Bilt's own growth history makes credible to probe.
Recent posts50
Great to share a stage at Henry Schein & Henry Schein One Thrive Live with Fred Lowery & Brian A. Colao
Great conversation about the past, present, & future of this space from culture to purpose to tech and all points in between.
8 years ago today our Bellevue, WA office burned down.
This photo reminds me of a great life lesson: if everyone came out unharmed, then it’s worth smiling about!
Smile Brands Inc.
Smiles for Everyone Foundation
Proud to be on this journey with you J.W. Oliver Jr & ZimWorX + SupportDDS
Along with Smile Brands Inc. & so many amazing leaders and companies that have joined the journey, we are supercharging local heroes to lift up their communities! 🙏🙏🙏
Henry Schein DDS Lab DDS Lab Envista Holdings Corporation Lollipop Pediatric Dentistry & Orthodontics
Smiles for Everyone Foundation 💙💙💙
Thank you to The Alumni Team at Pepperdine University & Pepperdine University, I appreciate you spotlighting this moment for me.
I’m very proud of all the on-going work at Smiles for Everyone Foundation each day. It’s also nice every now & again to look back at the learning over the last 15 years. Smile Brands Inc. & our team is dedicated to this work, as are some amazing industry partners, independent individuals, and even some classmates from my time at Pepperdine Graziadio Business School. It’s takes us all!
🙏🙏🙏
❤️ seeing Smiles for Everyone Foundation Thailand 🇹🇭 innovating for the win! Partnering with Khon Kaen University’s Faculty of Dentistry.
Through our mobile clinics, students and faculty help bring dental care to communities in need while learning the power of humanitarian dentistry.
Changing lives today & planting the seeds for the work to continue on and on….
💙💙💙
Smiles for Everyone Thailand : โครงการ “ปันรักปันน้ำใจ”
Faculty of Dentistry, KhonKaen University
Sal AberManaging Director at Wind Point PartnersAindustrial, b2b_services43.5K1mo ago When the best operators in the world choose you, you pay attention to why.
We serve more than 6,000 customers…›
AI ReadThis is a case of mistaken identity — the LinkedIn activity here belongs to a CEO of a mobile warehouse/storage trailer company ("Warehouse on Wheels"), not a Wind Point Partners MD. The posts about CRE brokers, storage trailers, and mobile capacity deployment have zero overlap with lower-MM PE or industrial platform investing. Either the profile pull grabbed the wrong person or there's a name collision on LinkedIn.
Before Russell spends any engagement capital here, verify he's looking at the right Sal Aber. The Wind Point MD worth targeting would be posting on platform builds, trades/industrial deal flow, or operator selection — none of which appears here. Engaging this feed gets him visible to logistics brokers and warehouse operators, not PE allocators or search funders.
Recent posts4
When the best operators in the world choose you, you pay attention to why.
We serve more than 6,000 customers today.
When I step back and look at that number, what stands out isn’t the scale alone but the depth of the relationships behind it.
A meaningful portion of that roster sits inside the Fortune 100. They’re world-class manufacturers and global distributors whose production systems are studied and whose distribution networks are engineered with precision.
In our world, companies operating at that level are disciplined about who they bring into their supply chain. Every square foot is measured, and movement has intent.
When they choose a partner and keep that partner embedded for two decades or more, there is a reason for it.
Our solution fits inside optimal production schedules and mature distribution philosophies.
As their businesses expand, contract, or adjust with economic cycles, we stay integrated, adapting alongside them and continuing to execute at the standard they expect.
I’ve always believed longevity is the strongest endorsement.
Twenty-plus-year partnerships with some of the best operators in the world reflect trust. Trust earned through consistent performance and alignment inside their ecosystem.
The 6000 customers tell one story.
Two-decade relationships tell the one that matters.
A CRE broker we know lost a $2M tenant because he couldn't deliver 10,000 square feet in 90 days.
We built a guide that shows brokers how to deploy mobile capacity in 48 hours so that call never ends badly again.
I’ve spent a lot of time talking with CRE brokers, and they’re in a pretty unique spot. Their job is to lease large facilities, but the way those buildings actually get used keeps changing underneath them.
When a tenant runs short on space, the first call often isn’t about renegotiating a lease. It’s a call that sounds more like, “we’ve got a problem, and we need help figuring out what to do next.”
This is where you see the supply chain reality. Things like volume shifts, inventory piling up, timing slips happen, and suddenly, square footage on paper doesn’t match what’s happening on the floor.
Mobile storage tends to fit into those moments really well. Just-right, just-in-time capacity that helps a tenant work through a disruption without forcing a long-term real estate decision they’re not ready to make.
The CRE playbook pulls together what brokers are already seeing, along with real use cases from across our network. Our intent with this playbook isn’t to teach anyone how to do their job! It’s just something practical they can use when a tenant calls under pressure.
For us, this is about helping CRE leaders show up with options and be the solution in the moment.
If you’re curious, you can find the CRE playbook here. ⬇️
https://lnkd.in/e8TMXguj
Happy to talk it through anytime.
I got really active on LinkedIn about a year ago. I've shared my story in text, but for those who are more visual, here ya go.
We (me, Matthew Hinson and Jim Perry) sat down recently with a film crew to tell our story. And I mean really tell it.
The output of this effort is a lot of different videos, including a podcast mini series, chatting with our team's logistics experts.
But this video might be my favorite, because it's a quick overview of how we got started, and where we're going.
Shout out to our crews at Meisler Trailer Rentals and FITS Trailer Rentals for showing the camera guys how we WOW our customers.
#SupplyChain
#SmartStorage
#Entrepreneurship
#Logistics
#Manufacturing
I think this is what the kids call a "mic-drop"?
(side note my adult children are cringing as they read this. They are likely saying, "Here's goes dad trying to be cool again!")
Alright, folks, as the CEO of Warehouse on Wheels, I’m pulling the ultimate “I told you so!” card. 😜 Our Economic Benefit Analysis is the mic-drop moment proving storage trailers are the smarter, less expensive, and faster way to crush supply chain chaos compared to those clunky, overpriced traditional warehouses. 📦🚛
With 40+ locations and tens of thousands of trailers, we’re your trusty neighbor who’s always got your back—delivering flexible, on-demand storage with that signature WOW-factor service.
No long-term leases, no wasted space, just serious savings (like $2.6M in lease savings over 5 years for one of our customers!). Our trailers are ready to roll (or chill) whenever you need them, minus the bureaucratic nonsense of old-school warehousing. 🙅♂️
Want to geek out on the numbers? Check out the attached Economic Benefit Analysis for the full scoop! 📊
When your supply chain throws a tantrum, skip the pricey warehouse lease and call WOW to keep things moving—literally! 😎
Visit wowtrailers.com for more.
Tim NelsonPartner at Saw Mill Capital LLCAindustrial11.5K1mo ago IR Pros is proud to announce our recognition as a 2026 CIO 100 Award Winner for RefrigAgent, our AI-powered co…›
AI ReadPartner at a lower-MM PE firm building industrial platforms — exact buyer profile for SearchLoop's deal origination pitch. The IR Pros/RefrigAgent post is telling: Saw Mill is actively backing AI-enabled compliance plays in industrial SMB, which means they're not allergic to tech-forward theses in unglamorous verticals. Nearly a lurker — one post, modest engagement — so his feed is low-noise and a sharp comment will stand out. Best angle: AI-in-industrial-SMB as a deal sourcing unlock, not just a portfolio company story.
Recent posts1
IR Pros is proud to announce our recognition as a 2026 CIO 100 Award Winner for RefrigAgent, our AI-powered compliance platform. Below is the official press release.
#AI Transformation is not just for the Fortune 500 -the right team in the SMB space can deliver immense value.
❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️
Saw Mill Capital
#CIOonline #CIO100 #NH3 #IRPROS
Howard UngerManaging Partner at Saw Mill CapitalA—25381mo ago IR Pros is proud to announce our recognition as a 2026 CIO 100 Award Winner for RefrigAgent, our AI-powered co…›
AI ReadLower-MM PE managing partner whose portfolio includes an AI-compliance play in refrigerant/HVAC-adjacent infrastructure — that's direct overlap with Russell's trades and specialty services thesis. Audience likely includes other lower-MM operators, deal professionals, and industrial SMB investors worth being visible to. Near-dormant poster (2 posts, minimal engagement), so comment quality matters more than frequency here. Best angle: engage on the SMB-AI deployment point — Russell can add deal-side texture on how AI tooling is reshaping origination in exactly these fragmented verticals.
Recent posts2
IR Pros is proud to announce our recognition as a 2026 CIO 100 Award Winner for RefrigAgent, our AI-powered compliance platform. Below is the official press release.
#AI Transformation is not just for the Fortune 500 -the right team in the SMB space can deliver immense value.
❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️
Saw Mill Capital
#CIOonline #CIO100 #NH3 #IRPROS
https://lnkd.in/eEmXNgJn
Ace ChapmanGrowth Through AcquisitionsBdiversified50+3.7K4mo ago Semi Absentee Commercial Cleaning With Diversified Services | New Jersey…›
AI ReadMicro-PE veteran with 200+ deals across SMB and lower-middle market — his audience skews toward first-time acquirers, search funders, and independent sponsors who are exactly the buyer persona SearchLoop serves. Posts almost exclusively deal listings with near-zero engagement, suggesting he's using LinkedIn as a passive deal board rather than building community. The one substantive post — the seller readiness checklist — is the real opening: Russell can add a buyer-side counterpoint on how AI-assisted deal origination changes what "readiness" actually signals to a systematic acquirer running a roll-up thesis.
Recent posts50
Semi Absentee Commercial Cleaning With Diversified Services | New Jersey
Absentee-Run MedSpa with Expansion Potential | Jersey City
Commercial Pressure Washing Business in Austin, TX
Established Community Laundromat
Exit Maximizing Seller Readiness Checklist
Most business owners don’t lose value at exit because of the market.
They lose it because they weren’t ready.
Before buyers look at valuation…
Investment banks and professional acquirers look at risk, structure, and readiness.
I put together a Middle-Market Seller Readiness Checklist that reflects how deals are actually evaluated before buyer outreach begins.
This is not a valuation tool.
It’s a pre-exit risk reduction framework used to protect multiples and prevent value leakage.
Inside the checklist:
• Financial readiness buyers expect
• Operational gaps that kill deals late
• Legal and structural issues that delay or discount exits
• How buyers think about growth and upside
• The owner readiness factor most founders overlook
If you’re considering a sale in the next 6–18 months, this is the right place to start.
Download the Exit Maximizing Seller Readiness Checklist here 👇
Palmer HigginsPartner at ChenmarkBdiversified52.0K10mo ago 🚨We're Hiring: Sales Manager at Mainely Grass🚨
If you're a driven, people-first leader who thrives in a fas…›
AI ReadChenmark co-founder operating a quiet, long-term hold model across landscaping and trades platforms — exactly the operator-investor archetype Russell's platform serves. Low engagement numbers and mostly job/event posts signal a near-lurker; he's not building an audience, he's maintaining a presence. The SMBash speaking slot is the real entry point — Russell can comment with a specific angle on how roll-up deal sourcing breaks down at the platform-add-on stage, where Chenmark's model lives.
Recent posts5
🚨We're Hiring: Sales Manager at Mainely Grass🚨
If you're a driven, people-first leader who thrives in a fast-paced, seasonal environment, this is your moment.
We're looking for a Sales Manager to lead a talented team of reps, build structure where it’s needed, and drive growth across our service areas. You’ll be hands-on from Day 1, with real ownership and support behind you.
Know someone who fits the bill? Or is that you? Let’s talk!
Chenmark is looking forward to returning to SMBash in Dallas in two weeks, where Palmer Higgins will be speaking alongside a great group of small business operators and investors.
SMBash has quickly become a premier gathering for those passionate about thoughtful, long-term small business ownership, and we’re excited to contribute to the conversation again this year.
If you’re attending, we’d love to connect!
Learn more here: https://www.smbash.com/
#SMB #SmallBusiness #ChaseBetter #SMBash2024
Chenmark companies are growing. Job opening at our Portland landscape company, Seabreeze. Check it out!
Interested in taking your talents to the Cape or know someone who does? Apply and reach out to Chris directly. Spring is right around the corner.
Looking forward to attending the upcoming SPARK! conference to hear how leaders of different businesses think about, manage, and lead transformational growth in their organizations.
Marcelo LimaManaging Partner, Heller House Opportunity Fund, L.P. A—191.2K2yr ago The median company at Block's scale generates $3 billion of operating profit and is doing 60% in op margin + G…›
AI ReadLow-volume poster with almost zero comment engagement — his audience is watching, not talking back, which means a sharp comment stands out hard. Marcelo is a Buffett-framework public equities investor whose followers skew toward sophisticated capital allocators — not roll-up operators, but exactly the LPs and independent sponsors who think in terms of moats and reinvestment rates. The angle: Russell can bridge Marcelo's public-market franchise analysis to private fragmented-vertical logic — same compounding math, different asset class.
Recent posts19
The median company at Block's scale generates $3 billion of operating profit and is doing 60% in op margin + GP growth, while Block is guiding to a mere $25 million op profit this year and aims to achieve a 40% op margin + gross profit growth.
https://lnkd.in/eZxiB99r
"Tesla has an enterprise value of around $830 billion. With just 40 million FSD customers, or a 3 percent market share, FSD alone would be worth more than the entire company is worth today. At a 30 percent market share, FSD would be worth $10 trillion."
https://lnkd.in/eiT-5AFU
"Imagine if Tesla’s NACS connector became a standard... This would allow Tesla to earn a fee on the ICE to EV conversion, to essentially become an EV tollbooth."
https://lnkd.in/evTaXdi3
I wonder if Meta employees, watching the Apple Vision Pro keynote, felt like the Research in Motion employees watching the iPhone announcement? What does this mean for Meta's goal of owning the next computing platform?
https://lnkd.in/eYJ8pDeN
Okta has suffered from a string of execution issues over the past couple of years, coupled with too much spending and too little profitability. Can it be fixed?
https://lnkd.in/e_Cza4eq
CChris VillanuevaDental CEO @ MB2 Dental | Driving Dental Industry GrowthAdental, healthcare21.1K5yr ago …›
AI ReadFounder of the largest dental partnership organization in the country — 1,300+ doctors, 39 states — Villanueva is ground zero for the DPO model that every dental roll-up buyer studies or competes against. His audience skews heavily toward dentist-owners considering partnership, dental executives, and DSO-adjacent PE. Light poster (2 posts, minimal engagement), but his follower base is exactly the operator-meets-investor crossover Russell needs visibility with. Best angle: the deal origination problem at scale — how do you source and qualify 800+ practice acquisitions without drowning in broker noise? Russell has the infrastructure answer.
Royce YudkoffProfessor at Harvard Business SchoolA——63lurker›
AI ReadGodfather-level credibility in the search fund world — co-founder of a major PE firm turned HBS professor who literally wrote the canonical text on buying small businesses. His followers are exactly Russell's buyers: aspiring and active searchers, independent sponsors, and the operators circling fragmented verticals. Zero posts in the last week confirms he's a lurker, so the play isn't reciprocal engagement — it's visibility to his audience when *they* post or comment. Engage in threads where Yudkoff's framework gets cited, then bring the buy-side operator reality: what deal origination actually looks like at volume when you're running a roll-up thesis, not a single acquisition.
Recent posts0
No recent posts — lurker account
Ismael ValdezOwner/CEO at Nexgen Air Conditioning Heating and PlumbingAtrades, hvac—1.1Klurker›
AI ReadIsmael Valdez built NexGen HVAC from zero to $110M — he's the trades operator celebrity that search funders and independent sponsors quietly study as proof of concept for what a well-run roll-up can become. His audience skews heavily toward ETA-adjacent operators, aspiring acquirers, and trades entrepreneurs who are exactly the people Russell needs seeing SearchLoop. Light poster, low engagement depth — two posts, minimal comments, mostly hype-and-energy content. The angle isn't the posts themselves; it's the comments section, where ambitious operators and would-be roll-up buyers congregate. Russell should show up there as the deal-side voice who understands what it actually took to scale NexGen — unit economics, technician retention, market density — not just someone celebrating the outcome. That's the non-obvious edge: Ismael's audience respects operators, so Russell's Treis underwriting background and trades roll-up math gives him credibility that a generic PE commenter won't have.
Recent posts0
No recent posts — lurker account