Even the strongest CEO from due diligence isn't safe from this one. If anything, the very autonomy that served him for a decade is why the first year of the investment gets bumpy.
Before closing, a fund examines everything that can be examined: competence, track record, crisis management. All of it sits in the past. How a CEO responds to a private equity fund's beat can't be tested that way, because he has never lived inside it. Reporting frequency, decision speed, how and where a piece of bad news is expected to land: to the people inside the fund, all of this is so self-evident that they never spell it out. You don't, after all, explain something you take for a law of nature.
That's exactly where the mismatch begins. A capable CEO, a sound plan, two different beats, and between them they stall the first year of the investment case. Which happens to be the very stretch where the course is set.
The good news: this mismatch isn't fate. It disappears the moment a fund puts its own beat into words instead of silently assuming it. In this edition of PMIspective, we show why fit and rhythm are two different things, why the gap sits structurally on the buy side, and what has to be said on day one so a strong CEO never turns into a misunderstanding.
📆 September 9, 2026, 1:00–1:40 pm CET
🎙️ Host: Dr. Carsten Friedrichs, The Hardt Group
🌎 PMIspective link
We look forward to your stories!
Can't make it this time?
No worries – the next PMIspective is scheduled for October 14. Save the date!
