Dear Private Equity Associates - You have an enormous opportunity to add value at your respective firms: go deep on understanding the technology both pre- and post-acquisition. Your bosses and bosses' bosses most likely don't
Rightfully, more and more attention is being paid to how a portfolio company's operations and culture are affected by large changes to the technology that runs the business. When there are meaningful technological changes, it
A number of small-to-medium sized businesses assign technology decision making to their CFOs. This is unfortunate. Technology is an essential component of every business today and creates competitive advantages. Most CFOs have no background in
Traditional RFIs and RFPs are painful experiences for both buyer and vendor. They're inefficient and often do a poor job of 1) conveying the actual business needs; and 2) vetting vendors. David Carlson, of Halsted
If you haven't already figured, I am all in on the importance of user experience and interface design in enterprise software. If you’re creating enterprise software, you’re going to need a proper user experience and
You absolutely cannot ignore The Law when it comes to the software running your portfolio companies. You need to be aware in both pre-acquisition diligence and post-close situations of how contracts are structured and more
If you're building custom software at your portfolio companies, you're going to need a team of software developers with modern stack credentials and experience. Finding and hiring the right developers for the job is a
Black farmers in the US’s South— faced with continued failure their efforts to run successful farms their launched a lawsuit claiming that “white racism” is to blame for their inability to the produce crop yields and on
Last week, a quote attributed to KKR's Anne Arlinghaus from the Ernst & Young Strategic Growth Forum hit Twitter and made my year!
Software testing. Perhaps the most underrated component of the software development life cycle. Perhaps the most likely to be impacted by scope creep. Perhaps an aspect of the software development process that you should pay
Agile. One of my favorite overused and not always understood phrases in the tech world. Why, as a private equity investor, should you care about what Agile is? Chances are that Agile is being used
This has been on my mind since last episode: Do you have tech expertise with you on monthly ops calls and quarterly board meetings? If not, why not?
This was a fire conversation with Jeff Piper, Managing Director, Svoboda Capital Partners. Tons of insight directly from the mouth of a private equity firm as it relates to tech decisions going on at portfolio
Apax Partners, the well-known private equity firm, recently announced the acquisition of ThoughtWorks, the well-known developer of enterprise custom software solutions. Conveniently, with this acquisition, Apax helps to drive home this podcast's base theory that
The look and the feel of enterprise software is often (and wrongly) overlooked. The Consumerization of IT continues to pressure organizations to make their enterprise software appealing both visually experientially, to both customers and employees.
When you're looking at (or own) a company whose revenues or key operations rely on proprietary technology, it probably makes sense to go much deeper than typical IT diligence, like into the actual software code
Mike Bestvina of Liberty Advisor Group checked in to discuss the current state of IT diligence. It was great to hear that IT diligence has just about made its way into the standard pre-acquisition diligence
Great discussion with David Carlson of Halsted Partners about the intersection of operations and technology and his thoughts on how Private Equity should navigate this intersection. David has some serious technology street cred as well,
Laying out my base theory on why private equity needs to pay greater attention to the technology running its potential acquisitions and portfolio companies. Technology provides another weapon in your arsenal to generate returns, yet
