Accelera Partners

Helping PE investors unlock people-powered value creation in their portfolio companies. We do this through leadership due diligence, assessment, alignment, and development.

Founder

The University of Chicago Booth School of Business

Adjunct Assistant Professor of Entrepreneurship

Winning Moves  |  Accelerate Value Creation

Book + online platform + advisory. Helping PE-backed companies to make value creation happen more consistently, predictably, and reliably.

Author & Creator

Various Growth-Stage Companies

Board of Directors

Alpine Investors

Principal & Operating Exec within top-decile mid-market PE firm. Within the firm, focused on portfolio management: eg. board leadership; growth & acquisition strategy; portfolio leadership & talent. Within the portfolio, took on several leadership assignments within portfolio companies in "moments of transition" — turnaround, carve-out, management rebuild.

Principal

Riverside Insights

Partnered with an amazing, purposeful team to lead the PE-backed carve-out of educational & clinical assessment business from a publically-traded publishing company. Achieved carve-out under-budget and ahead-of-schedule.

COO / GM

Beneco

CEO / Board of Directors

Citi

Consultant (Private Wealth Management Group)

Retirement Capital Advisors

Investment Research and Portfolio Management

Privately Held Business

Operations Management

Nearly two decades in private equity have taught me one thing: the game is changing. Fast. 

Gone are the days when investors could bank on financial engineering and multiple arbitrage to generate outsized returns. 

Welcome to the Value Creation Era of PE. The winners in this era? They'll be the firms that are surgical and systematic about driving value creation—and the ones that recognize you need the right leadership and talent in place to make it happen.

But here's the uncomfortable truth: many PE firms and portfolio companies aren't built to win in this new era.

→ Shoddy hiring and talent practices
→ Skipping org due diligence pre-deal 
→ No systematic approach to value creation planning
→ Failing to get the right team in place to drive that plan 

We see these same mistakes over and over. And early on in my own PE career, I learned the hard way that these things can be supremely costly. 

🚫 Lose precious time
🚫 Put value creation at risk
🚫 Leave returns on the table

Luckily, over years in the trenches at a top-decile PE firm—as an investor, operator, and board member—I figured out a thing or two about:

→ How to size up a target’s value creation readiness before investing.
→ How to get newly-acquired companies off to a strong start in the First 100.
→ How to ensure you have the right leaders in the most critical port-co roles.
→ How to develop leaders capable of meeting PE’s sky-high demands. 

In 2021, I made the leap: left a cushy role in PE to help more firms win in this new era. Through Accelera Partners, I help PE firms accelerate what I call "people-powered value creation" in four ways:

• Org due diligence - https://bit.ly/orgduedili
• Executive assessment - https://bit.ly/execassmnt
• Executive development - https://bit.ly/leadershipalpha
• Value creation planning - https://bit.ly/fst100

The bigger vision beyond advisory work? I’m building a constellation of businesses, projects and partnerships to help PE leaders accelerate people-powered value creation in their companies. Recent projects: 

→ Wrote the bestseller Winning Moves (the “defacto playbook” for PE value creation)
→ Created Ascend, a group-based leadership accelerator for PE-backed executives
→ Dropping a new book/product in 2025 on turbo-boosting value creation with AI
→ Teaching the next gen of value creators at Chicago Booth

Want to learn more?
→ My bestselling book on PE value creation >> https://amzn.to/3WsV0XP
→ Leadership accelerator for PE-backed execs >> https://bit.ly/ascendla
→ Loads of resources for PE professionals and execs >> https://bit.ly/dcremons

Dan Cremons

"Value creation" has lost its punch. 

Not because it's unimportant, but because it's overused to the point of exhaustion. 

Every IC deck mentions it. 
Every consultant sells it. 
Every board preaches it. 

This has diluted & confused the meaning. So let's simplify: 

Value creation = anything that creates equity value. 

And in a PE-backed company, there are only 5 ways to do that:

① Grow your revenue
② Expand your margins
③ Complete strategic acquisitions
④ Pay down debt
⑤ Expand your exit multiple

The rest is just details.

Driving equity value isn’t easy, but got to start with stripping away the fluff and focusing on the fundamentals. 

* * * * * 

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Former PE Investor & CEO // Current PE Advisor // Author // 𝘏𝘦𝘭𝘱𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘢𝘮𝘣𝘪𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘶𝘴 𝘗𝘌-𝘣𝘢𝘤𝘬𝘦𝘥 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘱𝘢𝘯𝘪𝘦𝘴 𝘢𝘤𝘤𝘦𝘭𝘦𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘦 𝘷𝘢𝘭𝘶𝘦 𝘤𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯

I’ve done the 8am CVG → LGA flight probably a half dozen times for work this year. But flying with a little travel buddy hit differently.

Been thinking a lot about work/life integration. And I'm considering making this a more regular thing next year.

Anyone cracked the code on how to do business travel with a kid in tow?

li_at

JSESSIONID

Talks about #talent, #leadership, #humancapital, #privateequity, and #valuecreation

I relearned an important lesson this year: 

I was talking to a PE-backed CEO in Q1, and came across my notes today. 

As a first-time CEO, he's grown his company from $3m ARR at time of original acquisition to $30m ARR today. 2 recaps, and has grown equity value something like 20x. 

He mentioned something that stuck, along the lines of: 

"Many of the things that have driven our success I hadn't done before. (...) There were a lot of new challenges for me."

I was looking at my chicken scratch notes from our call this morning, and I got to thinking: 

I'll take...

→ learning aptitude
→ growth mindset
→ persistence 

...over a been-there-done-that exec who scores lower in those areas any day of the week.

When I wrote Winning Moves 3 years ago, a few firms declined to be interviewed. Why? "Our value creation playbook is proprietary." 

That's fine. But don't kid yourself: A value creation playbook is hardly like the recipe for Coca Cola. In most cases, that secret sauce isn't all that secret. 

Lot's of PE firms are running the same plays. 

Yet some still operate from scarcity mindset: "We can't share our playbook! It's our competitive advantage!"

A working theory of mine: 

The firms who proactively share what they're learning will win bigger long-term.

Why? Because sharing creates a flywheel. A virtuous cycle. 

Putting your thoughts & learnings into the ether will help: 

→ Attract talent
→ Attract investors
→ Attract target companies

It's like what happened in B2B with inbound a decade ago. The companies that taught the most also grew the most.

Cool to see that PE is catching on. Love seeing more investment in thought leadership marketing. 

Scarcity thinking = hoard knowledge 
Abundance thinking = share knowledge

Sometimes, a PE port-co mgmt teams just want to hear their board say:

"We've got your back."
"We believe in you."
"We trust your call."
"Go for it." 

They don't always need strategic input.
Sometimes, they just need confidence.

PE Career Lesson #74: Results don't just magically happen. 

What some PE folks think happens:

→ Write the check
→ Share some best practices
→ Watch numbers go up
→ Collect returns

What actually happens:

→ People challenges
→ Execution roadblocks
→ Founder disagreements
→ Daily operational battles
→ Unexpected market shifts
→ Constant problem-solving
→ Unexpected customer issues

The gap is massive. And distance can create delusion. 

For this reason, my rule for any PE firm I'd one day start:

Everyone spends 6+ months in a portfolio company.

Not visiting. 
Not observing. 
Actually working.

You can't add value to what you don't understand.
And you can't understand from 30,000 feet.

IYKYK

* * * * * 
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Apparently Winning Moves is the #3 most gifted PE/M&A book on Amazon. Who knew?

PE folks apparently love gifting this book. 

Show some love to the PE operator in your life this Black Friday. Forget the coffee mug. Give the gift of knowledge. 👊

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I'm inventing a new LinkedIn term: "value-jack" (v.) (val·yew·jak)

It’s when a service provider latches onto some random subpoint in your post, bends it just enough to make it about their offering, and drops a two-paragraph sales pitch disguised as a comment.

Cool to see new data from the World Economic Forum backing up what’s been our hunch since we started our Ascend executive accelerator:

The skills expected to matter most by 2030 aren’t technical. 
They’re leadership and human.

In the top-right quadrant (skills that are both core today and growing in importance):

→ Leadership & social influence
→ Resilience, flexibility & agility
→ Motivation & self-awareness
→ Empathy & active listening
→ Talent management

That list looks a lot like the focus areas we’ve been building around in Ascend.
Excited to keep helping more PE execs skate to where the puck is going.

(Info about the program is in the comments below.)

Ever seen a 100,000x MOIC deal in private equity? Found one: 

Got a message from a reader of Winning Moves. A CRO at a smaller PE-backed software biz. 

He paid $10 for the book. 

Said the book helped give him the confidence to pull the pricing lever (chapter 9): 

• Ending excessive discounting 
• Shifting to value-based pricing 
• Raising price after years of no change 

Result: $1M+ boost to Y1 ARR & EBITDA.

LOVE seeing people put these ideas into action and capture big gains. 

$10 book → $1M+ in value

Time to settle the greatest, nerdiest, most consequential debate of the modern PE era: 

"EBITDA" = 

A) EE-buh-duh 

B) EE-bit-dah 

C) EH-buh-dah 

D) EH-bit-dah 

E) EE-bit-dee-A 

F) Some questions are better left unanswered


(P.S. If you say "EH-buh-dah" we need to talk)

Hot take: Human psychology should be a prereq in ANY business curriculum. It is very difficult to...

→ Hire well
→ Built trust
→ Lead others
→ Drive change
→ Sell effectively
→ Negotiate deals
→ Influence others
→ Make quality decisions

...if we don't understand how human beings (ourselves and others) work.

Wish I would have taken more courses on this stuff in my school days. But been trying to play catch-up since. 

Who's with me?

Struggling to retain good people in your company? Welp, you don’t actually have a “retention” problem...

You have a: 

→ Trust problem
→ Cultural problem
→ Leadership problem
→ Recognition problem
→ Compensation problem
→ Employee experience problem
→ Employee development problem

Retention is not the problem.
That's the result of the problem.

It's Q4 board meeting season in PE Land. 3 valuable ways a PE board member can contribute in a board meeting ⤵️

#1. - APPRECIATIONS
↳ Call out what's working and what's going well
↳ Acknowledge effort, progress, and wins publicly
↳ Reinforce the specific behaviors you want repeated

#2 - QUESTIONS
↳ Ask the question that unlock fresh thinking
↳ Expand management's thinking on critical decisions
↳ Challenge underlying assumptions without being combative

#3 - CONSIDERATIONS
↳ Share battle-tested experience
↳ Give management your best thinking 
↳ Offer new perspective on the thorniest issues

Most of us will overindex on #3. 

But an old mentor taught me a good rule of thumb:
Aim for a roughly balanced mix across all three.

10 powerful phrases I've heard empowering leaders use, and added to my repertoire. Add them to yours ⤵️ 

* * * * * 
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10 Phrases Empowering Leaders Use

If you’re a PE leader, stop asking "What should our AI strategy be?" It's the wrong question. 

Here's why:

An economic theory of mine: avocado toast is a fairly reliable barometer for inflation. And my oh my... avocadoflation is hitting NYC harrrrd.

The Fed should hire a millennial and start brunching.

Quest Software

Strategic Initiatives and Value Creation programs @ Quest Software (Clearlake Capital PortCo)

Vice President - Strategy & Operations

StarRez, Inc.

2nd tour as Director - Strategic Programs (DSP) in the Vista Equity Partners portfolio, this time for StarRez, the leading PropTech company in the Higher Education space
• Served as Day 1 member of Executive Leadership Team (ELT) for Vista Equity Foundation Fund platform investment in mission-critical SaaS provider in Higher Education vertical
• Owned implementation of Vista governance model and execution of Vista Best Practices playbook 
• Led Phase 0 current state assessment, creation and execution of inaugural Value Creation Plan, targeting performance improvement through implementation best practices across all functional teams
• Designed and executed cross-functional integration program for tuck-in of two main competitors, ensuring full PP&T integrationand expansion ARR acquired in first 6 months
• Achieved all individual MBOs for FY22 and FY23, while ensuring on target delivery of all financial results and operating metrics for FY22, and above plan trajectory in FY23

Director - Strategic Programs

Moody's Analytics

• Served as Chief of Staff to GM of newly formed, +$250M ARR operating unit, comprising data and analytics assets from within MA and acquired workflow software solutions PassFort and Kompany
• Managed and executed organic and inorganic value creation initiatives to scale new OU and drive growth acceleration beyond baseline +27% TTM organic revenue growth trajectory
• Supported MA Corp Dev team due diligence and transaction execution from concept-to-close of PassFort and Kompany acquisitions. Designed and implemented Day 1 integration program
• Owned operational integration of RDC into MA from Day 1, ensuring successful transition of people, process and technology while hitting all bookings, revenue, and EBITDA targets 
• Designed and implemented Joint Pursuits Program, incentivizing cross-sell collaboration between RDC and BvD sales teams and tracking to +$5M incremental ARR sales synergies in Year 1
• Managed 15+ SDR, Sales Support and RevOps direct reports through post-acquisition management attrition and pandemic-related disruption to ensure continuity of pipeline generation, efficient sales execution, and delivery of 300+ outbound SQL annual target

Director - Chief of Staff (KYC)

DSP and Chief of Staff to CEO of leading Rule of 50 RegTech company, providing AI/ML-powered and SaaS-based AML/KYC solutions to global FIs, asset managers and high-growth FinTechs. Vista Equity Partners portfolio company acquired by Moody's Analytics in Feb '20 for $700M. Now known as Moody's Analytics - KYC/KYS
• Served as strategic partner to CEO and ELT of +$50M ARR, “Rule of 50” Enterprise SaaS FinTech
• Owned and executed annual Value Creation Plan to deliver accelerating revenue growth, scalability, margin expansion, and TAM growth through product innovation
• Collaborated with Product & Tech on delivery and launch of industry first AI-powered screening solution, AI Review
• Triangulated with Vista Consulting Group, Deal Team and BOD to implement Vista Best Practices across all functions, creating significant enterprise value while managing organizational transformation
• Managed structured auction process for RDC, ensuring presentation of compelling acquisition case, timely and thorough DD responses, and smooth closure of $700M acquisition by Moody’s Analytics, delivering significant return on capital to Vista Equity Foundation Fund partners and investors

Transaction strategy and operational execution of mergers and divestitures for Fortune 150 clients, as senior consultant within Transaction Advisory Services - Operational Transaction Services (TAS-OTS) group, now known as EY-Parthenon

Senior Consultant

MBA Intern - Transaction Advisory Services

Berkery, Noyes & Co., LLC

Sell-side M&A analyst at leading middle market investment bank in media, technology and information services.

Analyst

DeSilva & Phillips

Education and Digital Media Associate at media-focused middle market investment bank, specializing in strategic acquisitions advisory

Associate

BCA Research

Business Development Associate

Andover Education

Conducted successful, oversubscribed capital round and executed strategic acquisition at innovative education services and digital curriculum company

Vice President - Finance

Value Creation Leader with deep experience building and scaling best practice organizations across private and public SaaS @ Quest Software (Clearlake Capital), Vista Equity Partners (2x Portfolio Operator) and Moody's Analytics

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