Size is a big factor when further dividing private equity into its component parts, and size also impacts which types of leaders will fit best.  Much of BSG’s team-building focus has been on middle market and lower middle market portfolio companies.  These companies typically have annual revenues between $10M and $500M.  Beyond size, while BSG has deep domain expertise in most subsegments of private equity, we are particularly schooled in sub-genres often referred to with the following descriptors:

Growth equity: this definition includes several PE strategies around value creation, including founder-led high growth, platform-plus-tuck-ins, and roll-ups.

Distressed equity: companies that have suffered a set-back of some kind that has put stress on profit, the team, and stakeholders.

Founder-led or founder-involved businesses:  Given BSG’s roots in venture capital-backed business, we know how different it is to bring in a new executive leader into a company that is still either led by or whose leadership team still contains founders and/or family members.  BSG is particularly ept at assessing the cultural dynamics of a founder/family involved chemistry and culture, where special care needs to be levered on the “fit” equation to ensure the new executive brought in will be able to contribute to value creation as investors would hope.

Carve-outs from larger corporate structures:  new leaders brought in to champion a carve-out from a larger corporate parent need to bring more on their toolbox than knowledge of TSAs (transactional service agreements).  These leaders need to have experience coalescing an organization, creating vision, culling out distractions, and ensuring that the kernel of value captured in the spinout doesn’t get lost in the distraction of rebranding exercises and loss of the former corporate parental umbrella.

Here are some interesting statistics for BSG’s private equity specialty practice over the last 24 months: