Private EquityKarma School of Business
Carr Preston, Managing Director at Akoya Capital, joins host Sean Mooney to discuss how private equity firms evaluate founder-owned businesses and drive long-term value creation. Preston outlines the critical importance of strong leadership, scalable sales operations, and thesis-driven operating models. The conversation also explores management team due diligence techniques and the value of establishing pre-close strategic alignment with business owners.
- Carr Preston, Managing Director at Akoya Capital, identifies commercial sales operations as the single highest-yield value creation lever in founder-owned buyouts. Read →
- Akoya Capital Managing Director Carr Preston treats solo plant tours as a major red flag when evaluating founder-owned businesses. Read →
- Carr Preston at Akoya Capital pairs investment teams with operating partners who carry 30 to 40 years of sector-specific operational experience. Read →
Private EquityKarma School of Business
Jon Haas, Managing Director of Portfolio Transformation at Clarion Capital, joins Sean Mooney to discuss how private equity has shifted from financial engineering to operational value creation. He outlines Clarion's eight-pillar transformation framework, shares how the firm maintained conviction during a distressed collections investment, and explains why LPs and investment committees must embrace intelligent risk-taking rather than consensus-driven downside avoidance.
- Clarion Capital focuses on founder-led and family-owned businesses, which make up roughly 80% of the firm's portfolio investments. Read →
- Clarion Capital generated an 8x return and tripled EBITDA over three years on Czech localization provider Moravia by rejecting consensus risk assumptions. Read →
- Institutional LPs demand top-decile performance while penalizing individual portfolio write-downs far more severely than they reward outsized winners. Read →
- Clarion Capital turned an accounts receivable management asset around after facing simultaneous shocks: COVID-19 shutdowns, lost clients, and consecutive CEO exits. Read →
- Twenty-five years ago, private equity generated outsized returns through lower entry valuations and cheap debt, allowing sponsors to win simply by buying well. Read →
Private EquityKarma School of Business
Dave Santoni, Managing Director at Audax Private Equity, joins Sean Mooney to discuss Audax's strategic approach to deal sourcing, add-on acquisitions, and vertical market mapping. He details how the firm integrates a 60-person Strategic Resources Group and proprietary AI tools across the entire investment lifecycle from pre-LOI diligence to portfolio operations and exits. Santoni also reflects on his career transition from law and investment banking to sponsor coverage, sharing lessons on the power of proactive curiosity and relationship building in modern private equity.
- Audax runs two distinct platform strategies: a lower middle market fund targeting $5 million to $20 million in EBITDA, and a middle market fund targeting $20 million to $75 million across five core verticals. Read →
- Audax Private Equity pairs a 10-person business development team with a 60-person Strategic Resources Group (SRG) to run diligence and operations simultaneously. Read →
- Dave Santoni spent nine years in legal training (three years in law school and six years as a corporate lawyer) before realizing his core interest sat in private market dealmaking. Read →
- Audax executes more than 100 add-on acquisitions per year across its middle-market private equity portfolio. Read →