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Private equity's constraint right now isn't capital. It's patience. I spent the afternoon at the Fifth Annual Amateras AEA Sunflower Summit in NYC. A rare room of forty women who've actually run things, talking candidly about capital and growing businesses. Three things I'm still thinking about: 1. The macro is boring, and that's the point. Nisha Patel, CFA framed it well. Higher cost of capital but open markets, inflation easing with costs still sticky, labor cooling rather than breaking, and a consumer who is resilient but trading down. It's manageable for disciplined operators, not easy. It also doesn't reward wishful thinking about AI. The gains are real, but they reach revenue and EBITDA only where governance, process, and change management exist underneath them. Otherwise you get pilots, not performance. 2. Private equity's constraint isn't capital. It's patience. Median US hold periods are now around 6.4 years, roughly double the mid 2000s. Over $1T in dry powder sits undeployed, and about a third of PE owned companies from the 2020 to 2022 vintage face refinancing decisions. Nobody wants to sell at a loss while still hoping for EBITDA improvement, so the gap between what sellers want and buyers will pay holds, and deals get done one at a time. That raises the question I now hear about nearly every fund. If multiple expansion isn't coming to the rescue and the obvious cost levers are already pulled, what's actually left in the toolkit? In my experience it comes down to how the company and its people are organized to deliver results, and to where AI genuinely changes roles, process, and data analysis rather than just redecorating them. This is real work for executive teams now, and the value of doing it now compounds. 3. The most underpriced thesis in the room was the woman consumer. Roughly $34T of US investable assets will be controlled by women by 2030, and more than half of women's assets are unmanaged today. The wealth is shifting faster than the institutions built to serve it. That isn't a talking point. It's an underwriting thesis. We also heard from women founders who scaled fast. A few things kept coming up. Start with the end in mind. Know when to take on outside capital. Build a team of advisors. The one that stuck with me most was knowing how to ask the right people inside your own business for what they can actually help with. That's the whole job, whether you're a founder at $20M or a CEO at $2B. Thank you to Alexandra Jung, Lily W. Chang, and the Amateras AEA team for convening it, and to everyone who spoke. Nisha Patel, CFA of Parametric Portfolio Associates. Holly Huels of Holleway Capital Partners. Kathleen Lauster, CFA of Armory Group. Randi Mason of Morrison Cohen. Anaïs Lempereur of Hallmark Media. Cheri McEssy of Neela Cares. Ashley Nickelsen of B.T.R. NATION. Anne Fulenwider of Alloy. Alexandra Lebenthal of Rockefeller Capital Management. And Beth Ward of Beth Ward Studios. #PrivateEquity Mann Partners