Adjusting the Sails
Growth equity insights for technology founders and private investors
I am overdue in finally putting the proverbial pen to paper here in a regular, written format. 20 years into my professional career, the disruptive forces of a global pandemic, political change and social unrest made it clear to me that following my investment passions to help scale small technology businesses was worth adjusting my sails to navigate the future ahead.
My plan is to share writings on a regular basis — a practice that I hope will add value for investors and founders alike, while also giving you a window into how I approach scaling B2B technology businesses.
I hope to provide insights on making and managing growth equity investments that will primarily benefit two types of readers — one, the owners & operators of small technology businesses and two, private market investors.
For the owners & operators,
I have always viewed small, growth companies as magnificent jugglers that must be nimble and decisive to make choices in the near term that can have uncertain long-term consequences. They continuously juggle existing opportunities, associated costs, new ideas and uncertainty to achieve the best outcomes for the business. As a trusted partner, a growth equity investor can help evaluate the right opportunities to tackle, recommend shifts in strategy or provide functional guidance through direct support. A juggling partner is something that can be invaluable to a company and rewarding to the growth equity investor at the same time.
In future posts, I intend to provide more detail, tackling topics that can help owners & operators scale through:
· Product development and R&D planning
· Sales team structure & expansion
· Marketing & lead generation
· Market mapping, benchmarking, strategy & competitive positioning
· As well as functional guidance for finance, compliance, HR or workflow.
For the private market investors,
Rather than juggling, private market investors may be more appropriately described as playing a long-term, strategic game of chess against their respective benchmarks — or opponents. Private market allocators can take many portfolio construction approaches, like chess strategies, such as building risk-based portfolios, utilizing market cap classifications, asset-liability matching or assembling a collection of generalist (beta) & specialist (alpha) strategies. Allocators often evaluate their results by seeking outperformance via absolute total returns, on a risk adjusted basis or other measurements like peer benchmarking or public market equivalents.
Future posts will aim to tackle topics for private market investors regarding:
· Relative risk/return comparisons for growth equity
· Investment themes
· Portfolio construction & diversification
· Valuations, deal terms & market activity
· And other investment related concepts that may benefit a professional manager of allocations to private equity.
Looking back at the challenges in 2020 and the opportunities ahead of us, the following quote resonates personally as we set sail into the future:
The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails.
I look forward to sharing more insights in the months and years ahead that I hope help you navigate your portfolio or business decisions successfully….insights that may just help you adjust your own sails.
