A few years back, an LP investing in mid-market PE asked me a question on a Zoom call that seemed innocuous at the time. He said: “How does an Operating Partner actually scale? You’re one person. You can’t sit in eight management meetings a week.” I gave him the then-standard answer – prioritization, frameworks, repeatable […]

What Two Decades of Executive Search Taught Me About PE’s Most Important Role Twenty years ago, when I started placing operating partners at private equity firms, the role barely existed. Most funds relied on a handful of retired executives on advisory retainers — no carry, no seat at the table, no real accountability. Today, operating […]

As a candidate for an Operating Partner role, it’s really difficult for you to do reverse referencing on the firm with which you’re interviewing.  Chances are that you’re new to this whole thing anyway. Relative to the firm itself, you’re operating from respective positions of power and weakness during the interviewing process.  You can be […]

This is a fireside chat from the Wharton Online/Wall Street Prep private equity certificate program featuring Chris Conti, cofounder and Managing Partner of Lancor, a global executive search firm focused on the Private Equity industry. Conti provides an in-depth overview of the Operating Partner role in private equity, explaining how it has evolved over the […]

The AI Future for Portfolio Operations:“It’s not hard to imagine an AI sitting on the investment committee…” Nik Kapauan joined Access Holdings in 2022 as a Managing Director on the Value Creation team. As a member of the team, Nik supports the firm’s thesis development, origination, execution, and portfolio management activities. He also leads Access’ […]

At the start of 2024, I wrote a post advising Operating Partners to keep their heads down and hold onto good seats. The market felt seized up. Activity was sluggish, and the client base was understandably cautious. Many firms were struggling to sell assets, and cost centers — including portfolio operations — were under review. […]

How does a firm know that it has the right person in the leadership chair for the Portfolio Operations team?  I occasionally get asked this question and TBH there’s not one foolproof way to answer it.  Many factors will influence your decision, but perhaps keep in mind some of the below points and themes. As […]

Having done this work for almost 20 years now, I do enjoy being able to watch the market for Operating Partners evolve as the macro cycles begin and end.  Nothing is permanent in this game.  The period between 2005 and 2008 were heady days for the function. We had the tailwinds of a great market, […]

One reason that I enjoy doing work across Private Equity portfolio operations is that the mandates are rarely ever carbon copies of one another. The beauty of an Operating Partner is that every firm, and dare I say every deal team inside every firm, can define an Operating Partner in their own novel way.  It […]

Like many of you, I’m a movie buff.  I’m a sucker for great storytelling and hold many of the Classics in a special place.  As a guy who grew up in Youngstown, Ohio in the 1980s, the mob movie genre has particularly held my attention.  No surprise then, The Godfather trilogy is a long term […]