Private equity firms face an increasingly complex investment landscape where traditional due diligence and value creation approaches are insufficient.
In today's rapidly evolving digital environment, PE & VC firms need to identify hidden operational risks, cut through AI and digital hype, and assess whether portfolio companies have the frameworks to navigate future challenges.
With increased competition among investors,
the ability to add value beyond funding has become a critical differentiator, and the quality of deal flow and assessment capabilities increasingly separates successful firms from the rest.
Unlike traditional consultants who focus on historical performance validation, our “Problem-first” approach, combined with hands-on startup/scaleup coaching experience, offers PE firms a powerful toolkit for enhancing Sales & GTM, digital and marketing due diligence processes.
By anchoring analysis in customer problems rather than solutions,
this approach provides deeper insights into market opportunities, competitive positioning, and value creation potential.
WE directly address the industry's awakening that financial engineering alone no longer creates value, positioning PE firms to systematically transform portfolio companies into high-performance growth platforms rather than relying on exceptional individual efforts and unsustainable growth spurts.
The key to successful implementation lies in recognizing that this approach represents not just a new tool, but a fundamental shift toward customer-centric thinking that permeates all aspects of due diligence and value creation planning
What sets us apart?
The Problem-First Methodology
The convergence of our customer-centric innovation methodologies and hands-on startup /founder coaching experience presents a transformative opportunity for private equity firms - especially when conducting Sales & GTM, Digital and Marketing due diligence.
This Lean Startup Framework, combined with practical startup/founder coaching expertise, offers a more rigorous and insight-driven approach to evaluating portfolio companies' market positioning, customer relationships, and growth potential.
The Problem-First Methodology
Unlike traditional canvases, we aim to reimagine how investment professionals should evaluate business models to factor in the accelerated pace of innovation.
We begin with the Problem as the central anchor point, asking "Who has the problem?" rather than starting with solutions or products.This problem-centric approach includes several key components:
Problem: The unresolved issues that customers face in the market
Pain Points: The specific challenges customers perceive (and those they don't yet recognize)
Customers: Defined by answering "Who has the problem?"
Competitors: Those already solving parts of the problem, regardless of their approach
Activators: Stakeholders who make problems more visible to the market
Instead, our approach emphasizes:
Customer-driven validation over product-driven development
Added value that goes beyond what competitors are delivering
Revenue models directly linked to the value delivered
Visibility strategies that map all touchpoints between company and market
What sets us apart?
Lean Implementation
Accelerated Value Creation Planning
Our hands-on startup/scaleup coaching experience provides PE operating partners with practical frameworks for implementing rapid improvements in portfolio companies.
This experience enables:
Rapid Hypothesis Testing: we understand how to quickly test and iterate on business model assumptions, accelerating the typical PE value creation timeline.
Lean Implementation: Experience with lean startup methodologies helps PE firms implement "continuous customer discovery" processes that make portfolio companies increasingly smart and adaptive to the ever-changing reality of the market.
Enhanced Due Diligence Questioning: A framework that enables more sophisticated due diligence questioning that goes beyond traditional financial and operational metrics:
Customer Development Maturity: we can assess whether portfolio companies have robust customer development processes in place, which is crucial for sustained growth.
Pivot Capability: Our experience with startups provides insight into management teams' ability to adapt and pivot when initial assumptions prove incorrect.
Strategic Applications for PE Due Diligence
This problem-first approach provides PE firms with a more robust method for validating market opportunities during due diligence. Rather than relying solely on financial metrics, this framework enables deeper analysis of:
Customer Problem Validation:
PE firms can assess whether portfolio companies are addressing genuine, significant market problems versus creating solutions in search of problems. This is particularly crucial given that business fail due to 'no market need'".
Competitive Landscape Analysis:
By understanding that competitors might not use the same product, distribution strategy, monetization scheme, or technology, PE firms can better evaluate competitive threats and opportunities that traditional due diligence might miss.
Customer Development Integration
The framework's emphasis on customer discovery aligns with proven methodologies for reducing investment risk. This customer-centric approach helps PE firms:
Validate customer segments and their pain points
Assess product-market fit more accurately
Identify potential pivot opportunities
Evaluate scalability of customer acquisition strategies
Digital & Marketing Due Diligence Enhancement
Problem-Solution Fit Assessment
In digital and marketing due diligence, this framework provides a structured approach to evaluating whether portfolio companies have achieved genuine problem-solution fit.
This assessment includes:
Digital Market Validation:
Evaluating whether the company's digital presence effectively addresses customer pain points identified through the framework. This goes beyond traditional metrics to assess whether digital touchpoints genuinely solve customer problems.
Marketing Message Alignment:
Assessing whether marketing communications accurately reflect the value proposition derived from problem-solution analysis. This helps identify gaps between what companies claim to offer and what customers actually need.
Customer Journey Optimization
The framework's emphasis on understanding customer problems enables more sophisticated analysis of digital customer journeys. PE firms can evaluate:
Whether digital touchpoints address specific customer pain points
How effectively the company's digital presence moves customers through problem recognition to solution adoption
Alignment between customer development insights and digital marketing execution
How we can help
Portfolio Value Creation Through Meaningful KPIs:
Investment Marketing Framework
Transform portfolio companies from performance optimization to enterprise value creation by treating every operational investment as capital allocation with measurable impact
Value Metrics Over Vanity Metrics Implementation
Design measurement frameworks that track customer lifetime value, incremental revenue attribution, and enterprise value impact rather than clicks, impressions, and surface-level conversion rates
Implement leading indicators of sustainability including process consistency scores, system reliability metrics, and management capability assessments that predict future performance rather than just recording past results
Strategic Prioritization and Capital Allocation Framework
Develop integrated value creation planning that evaluates marketing, sales, operations, and technology investments as components of an integrated growth engine rather than isolated functional initiatives
Create repeatability enhancement criteria for all operational investments, focusing on building data infrastructure, process documentation, and automation capabilities even when manual solutions appear more cost-effective short-term
Scaling Readiness and Competitive Advantage Evaluation
Assess whether portfolio companies can generate the same (or better) results again without heroic effort through systematic evaluation of their repeatability engines
Implement competitive advantage durability analysis to determine if advantages are systematized and defensible versus dependent on temporary market conditions or individual relationships
Design long-term systems thinking frameworks that enable sustainable competitive advantages rather than optimizing monthly performance metrics
