Who we work with
Investment firms across private equity, venture, growth, private credit and infrastructure, when a fundraise, a transaction, a succession or a period of scrutiny depends on how the firm is understood by investors, founders, borrowers and intermediaries.
Founders and leadership teams of the companies those firms back, where market position, market traction and investor confidence shape the path to growth or a transaction.
Relevant experience
We have worked with investment firms across private equity, private credit and venture, from one of Europe’s largest private markets investors to specialist managers and early-stage funds, on positioning, investor cases, transactions and difficult periods.
We have also advised portfolio companies, listed businesses and venture-backed firms on market position, equity stories and the moments that decide them: financing rounds, listings, sales and setbacks.
When clients call us
When the next fundraise demands a clearer investment case. Returns, distributions, fees, the team and the investor’s own liquidity decide a re-up. We test what sets the manager apart, sharpen the proof points and make sure the case holds across the partners, the documents and the investor conversations, alongside investor relations and the placement agent, never instead of them. A narrative will not repair a weak vintage, and we say so early. It can stop a good one being misread.
When a portfolio company’s market position has not caught up with its progress. The growth is in the business and the people pricing it cannot yet see it. We examine how customers, investors and acquirers each read the company, find the gap between its performance and what they can verify and make it legible to them well before a financing or an exit.
When the firm faces a question in public that it has only answered in private. A critical report, a regulator’s request, a reporter working from a document the firm has not seen or an investor who has read all three. We establish the facts, test how each stakeholder will respond and prepare the position before the question—with counsel where the matter is legal—and hold it when the question comes.
When the firm is larger than its reputation. Growth, an acquisition or a succession can change an investment firm faster than its market identity. We clarify what is distinctive, establish the evidence behind it and give the next generation of partners a house view investors can cite before they are asked to re-up on them.
When the right founders, borrowers or intermediaries are not finding the firm. Deal flow favours the firms considered early, by people who learn about a firm from its record, its network and, increasingly, from deal databases and AI assistants. We assess how the firm is discovered and understood by each of them, then make it legible in the places they look first.
Our perspective
Private markets are becoming public in one respect: what they must explain, and to whom. Institutional investors scrutinise distributions, valuations and the sources of return more closely than a decade ago. Wealth channels add audiences and, in some vehicles, investors who can redeem. Venture firms compete for the trust of the best founders. Credit managers depend on business owners and intermediaries choosing them over a bank. Limited partners increasingly put what a firm has published through AI before the first meeting. These are different markets with one condition in common, which we think of as perception debt: the gap between what a firm knows to be true and what investors, founders, borrowers or buyers can verify for themselves. It accumulates quietly while a firm grows and falls due at the fundraise, the exit or the first difficult question.
Fundraising has become a positioning market
Limited partners prune relationships more readily than they add them: a new commitment needs a reason, a lapsed one needs only the absence of one. Performance, liquidity and strategy set the terms. When track records are close, the decision forms earlier, from the visibility of the leadership, the consistency of the firm’s documents and whether its difference can be repeated by a committee that never met the partners. Positioning makes that evidence easier to evaluate, within the pre-marketing and marketing rules that govern what may be said to whom and when.
Value creation starts with the business
When multiples stop rising, the return comes from the operations and the exit price from how much of that a buyer can verify. An equity story is the account of what improved, why it matters commercially and what makes the progress durable. A category is where a strategic buyer or a listing looks for the company and the comparables it is priced against. Both are built over time from customer evidence and management credibility, and both start with a plain read of how the company is valued today and what holds it there.
Scrutiny sorts the prepared from the rest
Scrutiny is good for the firms that are ready for it. Gates on semi-liquid vehicles and regulators’ attention to private credit are the contested parts of this market. So are DPI, which investors check before they open the deck, and continuation vehicles, which must prove they were a choice and not an avoidance. The best response is not a better defence but a clearer record: what happened, why, what changed and what remains uncertain. A firm that can give that account of its marks, liquidity terms, conflicts and fund terms before being asked is harder to pass over. A firm that cannot does not lose the argument. It loses confidence, which in this market is the asset.
The answer is not always better communication
Sometimes the position needs a stronger argument. Sometimes it needs better evidence, new relationships or a change in what the firm does. The first problem is often not the real problem, which is why the work begins with diagnosis, not execution. We work directly with the firm’s leadership, inside its logic and outside its bubble, alongside investor relations, the placement agent, the bank and counsel—never instead of them. The judgment about what not to claim is usually the work that matters most.
How we help
- Firm and fund positioning
- Renewing the investment thesis, differentiation and proof points after growth, an acquisition or a succession, including the firm’s AI and data capability as an investor signal, evidenced rather than claimed.
- Fundraising and investor engagement
- Building the investor case and the proof points for the next raise and testing them for consistency across every partner, document and conversation, alongside investor relations and placement agents.
- Portfolio-company equity stories and positioning
- Building market position, category, equity story and leadership profile for founders and management teams early enough to matter at a financing, a sale or a listing.
- Origination and market access
- Making the firm legible to the founders, business owners, borrowers and intermediaries who bring it deals, and present in the deal databases, event programmes and AI assistants where it is first considered.
- Valuation perception and value diagnostics
- Reading how a company or a manager is valued against its comparables by investors and buyers, and what evidence would move that reading, alongside the firm’s financial advisers.
- Crisis management and scrutiny preparedness
- Mapping the exposures and agreeing what may be said before a default, a critical report or a run on redemptions, then rehearsing the partners and handling the response when it comes.
- Media relations
- Handling announcements, profiles, background briefings and the difficult call for the firm, its transactions and its portfolio companies, across Europe’s main markets and language areas.