Great article. You could summarize it down to this statement: "If you’re in a supporting role - operating partner, advisor, board member - you don’t get to decide how valuable you are. The people you're helping do." How many operating partners actually believe this, or even want to know the answer to this?
Excellent article. It sums up my observations of most PE Operating Partners I have met in the past 12-14 months, asking them if my outsourced Sales Team as a Service offering would be useful to their portcos.
Their responses generally indicated they had no idea how to help their portcos with Sales, apart from telling CEOs to "hire better."
After multiple discussions with OPs at various PE and other investment firms, I started wondering: "Portco Founders/CEOs are certainly struggling, esp with driving revenue - how do these guys even help them?"
A lot of them don't help, unfortunately. They just heap on more pressure and reporting and call the job done.
Personally, I think it's wrong to raise the bar on people and then not give them the support and resources they need to meet it. And when you accept that as part of the job of an operating partner, you start spending your time very differently.
More on my take on "what the operating partner job actually is" here:
Even worse: They gatekeep. They meet outside providers - introduced by the people who run the funds - who could help portco CEOs, but they dismiss them outright b/c their model does not conform with the narrow scope they have created for "what helpful looks like."
Great article. You could summarize it down to this statement: "If you’re in a supporting role - operating partner, advisor, board member - you don’t get to decide how valuable you are. The people you're helping do." How many operating partners actually believe this, or even want to know the answer to this?
This is really good.
Very WELL-written.
THIS is how You/I/We separate ourselves in a space that promotes complexity, but begs for simplicity.
BOOM
Excellent article. It sums up my observations of most PE Operating Partners I have met in the past 12-14 months, asking them if my outsourced Sales Team as a Service offering would be useful to their portcos.
Their responses generally indicated they had no idea how to help their portcos with Sales, apart from telling CEOs to "hire better."
After multiple discussions with OPs at various PE and other investment firms, I started wondering: "Portco Founders/CEOs are certainly struggling, esp with driving revenue - how do these guys even help them?"
Your article answers my question.
A lot of them don't help, unfortunately. They just heap on more pressure and reporting and call the job done.
Personally, I think it's wrong to raise the bar on people and then not give them the support and resources they need to meet it. And when you accept that as part of the job of an operating partner, you start spending your time very differently.
More on my take on "what the operating partner job actually is" here:
https://hellooperator.substack.com/p/what-does-an-operating-partner-do-e15ba155b0d5
Even worse: They gatekeep. They meet outside providers - introduced by the people who run the funds - who could help portco CEOs, but they dismiss them outright b/c their model does not conform with the narrow scope they have created for "what helpful looks like."
I could name names...but I won't. :-)
Yikes
Just validating how real the problem is...