“I thought I was a power user. Then I started working with Mark and realized I had no idea what was actually possible.”
Read the case studyPE firms · Portfolio companies
AI for Private Equitythat moves EBITDA, not slides.
Your LPs are asking about AI. Your portcos are paying for licenses that haven't moved a number. We run our AI Transformation Playbook across the portfolio: audit, train and build agents at one company, then roll the same toolkit to the next. Measured in the KPIs your boards already track.
- Diligence to exit
- Agents each portco owns
- One toolkit, rolled forward
Every portco is running its own AI experiment. None of them compound.
The thesis said AI value creation. The reality across the portfolio is one company with a champion, three with idle licenses, and the rest waiting for someone to tell them where to start. Each CEO is fielding the same board question alone, and each one is about to buy a different answer.
That is expensive twice. You pay for twenty uncoordinated experiments, and you lose the thing a portfolio is for: leverage. What works at one company should get cheaper and faster at the next. It only does if somebody builds it once, writes it down, and carries it forward.
- That is the engagement: our core package, rolled out across a portfolio. One operator, one toolkit.
- Built at the anchor company, reported on the metrics they already run, in language an IC meeting recognizes. Smaller funds ($50–200M) usually contract this fractionally. They do not have the AUM to staff a full-time Head of AI.
Two ways in
For the firm. For the portfolio company.
PE buyers do not shop by service name. They shop by where the deal is. Start at either level and the toolkit is shared. Smaller funds usually start at one portco.
For the Firm
Portfolio AI Diagnostic
A comparable readiness read across your companies: who has leverage waiting, who has risk, and where the first dollars come from. Written for operating partners, not engineers.
Executive Sessions Across Portcos
Working sessions with each leadership team on their own P&L and their own workflows. Executives leave with systems running, not a vendor evaluation to schedule.
One Toolkit, Rolled Forward
Everything built at the anchor company is documented and reused: the fluency rubric, role tracks, department agents and the metrics that moved. The firm owns it, and every later rollout starts warmer and lands faster.
For the Portfolio Company
Readiness Assessment
Ten minutes, seven dimensions, and a straight answer on where to start. The free version qualifies the conversation; the paid audit goes function by function.
Executive Session + Team Rollout
Leadership first, then each department on its real work: sales, support, finance, ops. Then agents built with each department that the portco owns. Adoption you can count, not licenses that sit idle.
90-Day Acceleration + Advisory
Baseline the KPIs they already track, ship weekly, report at day 30 and day 90 on those same numbers. Then an operator stays in the corner as the ongoing rung.
The hold period, mapped
Diligence to exit, with AI earning its keep at every stage
Stage 1
Diligence
A plain-English read on the target before you wire the money: where AI moves the P&L in year one, what the data reality is, and what the first 100 days should look like.
Stage 2
First 100 Days
The window when change is expected. The AI Audit, an executive session, training on real work and the first department agent, shipped while the mandate is fresh.
Stage 3
Hold Period
Where EBITDA is made. One department agent a month in production, opex programs with a number attached, and a senior operator on call for the executive team.
Stage 4
Exit
The AI story a buyer will believe: documented systems, the metrics the company already ran, moving, and a toolkit that transfers with the company instead of leaving with a person.
Portfolio economics
Built once. Reused across the portfolio.
The toolkit compounds
The first rollout does the heavy lifting: the fluency rubric, the role tracks, the policy, the metrics baseline. Company two starts from a working toolkit, not a blank page, so per-company cost drops with every rollout.
Less than a third of one hire
An internal Head of AI runs well north of $300K a year per company, before they have shipped anything. One senior operator across the platform costs less than a third of one of those hires, and starts shipping in week one.
Defensible to the board and LPs
Every engagement ends in writing: what was built, and which of their existing KPIs moved. Numbers that survive an IC meeting, not “AI transformation underway” on a slide.
The evidence lives on this site, not in a deck: ServiceCore, a PE-backed vertical SaaS company, went from AI in engineering only to 80% of its people using it every week. Go Nimbly, a RevOps consulting firm, hired us to build a custom AI staffing engine. A founder we coached 5–6x’d her output, and her case study is published with her name on it.
Fit check
We'd rather tell you no on the first call
Right fit if
- You are an operating partner whose portfolio companies are each running their own AI experiment, and none of them compound.
- A portco COO, CFO, or CEO has an efficiency mandate with a number attached and no plan that survives contact with the P&L.
- You run a smaller fund ($50–200M) without a full-time Head of AI. You contract this the same way you contract recruiting.
- Your companies are field services, vertical SaaS, manufacturing or logistics: real-work businesses, not tech companies.
- The board asked what the AI plan is, and “we bought licenses” is not going to hold.
Wrong fit if
- You want a 40-page strategy document and no working systems. Large firms do that well. This is the other lane.
- You are looking for offshore build capacity by the hour. Engagements here are fixed-scope and operator-led.
- Nobody at the firm or the portco owns the outcome. The toolkit compounds only when someone is accountable for it.
In their words
Operators who put AI to work in their companies.
Founders, CEOs, and executives: the same rooms your portfolio companies are sitting in.
“Working with Mark turned my AI curiosity into actual leverage. I show up to enterprise calls with answers, not questions.”
“If you’re a CEO and you’re not building with AI yet, Mark is the guy. He doesn’t teach theory - he hands you the keys.”
“Last month I was just asking ChatGPT to write emails. Now I’ve built a client onboarding tool, and my team probably thinks I hired a developer.”
VP of Operations
Series B SaaS
“Research that used to take me half a day now takes 20 minutes. Competitor analysis, market research, customer interviews - all transformed.”
Strategy Consultant
Management Consulting
“I finally understand what my engineering team is talking about. More importantly, I can spec out AI features without needing them in every conversation.”
Product Leader
Fintech
“The prompt engineering framework alone saved me. I was getting mediocre AI outputs for months. Now I get usable first drafts 90% of the time.”
Marketing Director
E-commerce Brand
One toolkit. Every portco.
Thirty minutes. Bring one portfolio company you want moving. You'll leave with a written read on where its first AI dollars are. If we're not the right fit, we'll say so.
AI for Private Equity FAQs
How portfolio engagements run, who buys, and what ships when.
We start with one company, not twenty. The anchor portco gets our core package: the AI Audit, an executive working session, training on real work, and one department agent build a month. Every rubric, role track, agent and decision gets documented into a toolkit the firm owns. The second company starts from that toolkit instead of from zero, so each rollout gets faster and cheaper than the last. Operating partners get a comparable picture across companies instead of twenty vendors telling twenty different stories. Smaller funds ($50–200M AUM) usually contract this fractionally. They do not have the management fees to staff a full-time Head of AI.
Yes. Pre-close, we give you a plain-English read on a target: where AI can actually move the P&L in the first year, what the data and tooling reality is, and what the first 100 days should look like. It is written for an investment committee, not for a technical audience. Post-close, the same document becomes the execution plan instead of shelfware.
Both, in sequence. The introduction usually comes from an operating partner or a board member who wants the portfolio moving. The engagement itself is owned by whoever wears the AI hat at the portco: CEO, COO, CFO, or a VP with an extra hat. The CFO signs off on the budget. We work with whoever owns the number.
Scoped on the call and quoted upfront, in writing, before any work starts. We price the program, not the head count. Portfolio work compounds in your favor, because the toolkit built at the first company carries to the next one. If you want a number your IC can react to, book the scoping call and you will have a written proposal within two business days.
Everything runs in your accounts and your portfolio company’s accounts: their AI subscriptions, their data, their access controls. Nothing routes through ours. Every engagement includes a written AI use policy and guardrails, so the rollout is something your counsel and your LPs can live with, not a shadow-IT problem you discover later.
The first working systems ship during the first session. Executives leave with tools running on their own work, not a list of ideas. Then the AI Audit baselines the KPIs they already track, and each month one department gets an agent it owns, reported against that baseline. If a quarter goes by with nothing shipped, something is wrong. That is the standard we hold.
That is most of our work. Field services, vertical SaaS serving blue-collar industries, manufacturing, logistics: companies where the work is real and the software budget is not the product. The plays are different from a tech company’s (quoting, scheduling, reporting, back-office), but the operating math is the same: the metrics they already run, moving faster.
A large firm will happily spend two quarters producing a strategy document. This is the other lane: a senior operator who works directly with your executives and ships working systems weekly, for less than a third of what one $300K Head-of-AI hire costs a single portco. Many firms run both. The decks describe the future; this installs it.