Perspectives
Operator perspectives on the decisions that define PE-backed SaaS companies.
These articles cover the situations where product, technology, and operating decisions most directly affect hold-period value creation, from diligence and integration to portfolio strategy, organizational change, and AI transformation.
Perspectives Series
Leading in the Age of AI Disruption
AI can clone your software. It can't clone your business. Three articles on where the real value lives, how to stay focused on outcomes rather than AI theater, and why transformation is a people problem first.
Part 1 of 3
AI Can Clone Your Software, Not Your Business
AI is commoditizing the code layer fast. But your product's value was never really in the code. It's in the customer relationships, proprietary data, and embedded workflows that no one can clone.
Part 2 of 3
Staying Focused on Business Value, Not Just AI
MIT research found that 95% of enterprise GenAI pilots deliver zero measurable ROI. The problem isn't the technology. It's that AI initiatives get organized around what AI can do rather than what the business needs.
Part 3 of 3
AI Transformation Is a People Problem First
AI transformation is not a technology project. The organizations that capture real value treat it as a full organizational evolution, with C-suite ownership, honest investment in people, and the discipline to build shared practice, not just individual fluency.
All perspectives
The Product Is the Asset. Too Many PE Firms Are Flying Blind.
Private equity firms model every scenario and track portfolio performance with precision. And then they systematically underinvest in understanding the foundation that drives everything else: the product, the technology, and the organizations that deliver them.
10X Didn't Come from a Single Transformation. It Came from Years of Evolving Everything at Once.
I helped drive a VC-backed customer journey analytics startup to 10X growth by doing something harder than any single transformation: we continuously evolved our roles, processes, and technology together, for years. This is the pattern. Recognize it, and you can lead it.
Looking at the Asset the Way You Would If You Owned It
In a PE-backed SaaS company, the product is the asset. Whether that asset appreciates or decays is never a technology question alone. It is a business question that runs through every function, and the answer almost always lives in how well those functions connect.
Acquiring a Company Is the Easy Part. Integrating the Organization Is Where Value Is Made or Lost.
The strategic and technical dimensions of M&A integration get most of the planning attention. But across every integration I've led or advised, the organizational dimensions are what determined whether the acquisition actually delivered.
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