An operator in the empty seat within weeks, running the function to the value-creation plan until the permanent hire lands, or longer if the work says so. We have sat in capital board meetings from both sides of the table, and we do the operator's part: the number has to be real before anyone acts on it.
A departure, or a seat the deal assumed and nobody filled. We cover it this month and run the function to the plan.
The company ran on the founder. The plan needs it to run on the team. We build the roadmap by each person's part and transfer the muscle.
Twelve to eighteen months out, two questions set much of the price off the P&L. Is the success of this business intertwined with the owner, or has the team been empowered to be the success? And how much of the daily work adds no value, and what could the same people produce if it were replaced with work that does?
The first days are interviews, until we are sure we share the vision: yours, the CEO's, and the plan's. At the end of thirty days you have the roadmap to the goal, broken out by each person's part, with the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats on each part, the levers to pull when a risk shows up, and the offshoots worth taking and the ones to ignore. It is a living document. We sign off on it together in regular meetings: progress, blockers, accelerants, and whether we still share the same vision.
Every number in it is built forward. We started out stress-testing other people's ROI models, and sixty seconds usually tells which way a number was built: forward from the facts, or backward from an answer somebody already picked. The board gets the first kind.
The portfolio company CEO gets an operator who holds the shared vision as hard as anyone in the room and will still name the part nobody wants: what stays, what goes, and what gets cut so the new thing gets funded. Above you, below you, or next to you. The org chart doesn't matter. The shared vision does.
BDO's 2026 survey of private equity leaders asked what constrains returns. They did not say capital or technology. 48% said people: finding them and keeping them. In the same survey, 80% of portfolio companies are now held five years or more. Ownership changes, systems change, AI lands in the middle of the operating model, and somebody with judgment has to settle it and keep everything going.
We are not investment bankers and we are not M&A attorneys, and we won't pretend to be either. We do the operator's part: pre-LOI readiness, operational diligence, and the first hundred days after close, when the plan either becomes real or becomes a binder.