Misconceptions about Private Equity

Many business owners are aware of private equity as a potential source of growth funding, but the benefits can often be unclear or misunderstood, leading to scepticism when assessing whether outside investment is right for their business.

We speak to several of our investees about their misconceptions about private equity and how in reality having a long term, supportive investment partner has made a positive impact on their business helping them to grow further and faster. 

Frederico Charosky, CEO at Quorum Cyber: I had a lot of preconceptions about this whole process before I began because I hadn't been through it before, so as I spoke to other partners, friends or the people that have been through the journey, you get all these horror stories of what could potentially go wrong if the relationship sours. So, I came into it quite naive looking for 'well surely it doesn't have to be like that for everyone.'

Steve Mathers, Global Commercial Director at McGavigan: Taking a step to bring external investment into your business is always a bit daunting and there are many misconceptions about private equity and VCT money as being a threatening environment, it's actually quite the opposite. Often finding the right private equity organization who has a clear but pragmatic view as to how businesses should be developed and run and finding organizations that are actually investing in management teams rather than bricks and mortar is mission critical I would say for any potential Investee.

David Clee, CEO at MirrorWeb: What they enabled us to do was really scale our business and start to really address the market they gave us the firepower to hire the right people in the right roles at the right time.

Frederico Charosky, CEO at Quorum Cyber: I can honestly say that we've had a fantastic relationship with Maven since day one, the humanity with which the conversations are approached are completely different from what you would expect. It's not about the numbers it's about the team pulling together to achieve what they want to achieve. It’s about what are the challenges that you're facing and how they can help you overcome them. Obviously, there's a financial framework to these conversations but there's a lot more than just an excel sheet model.

James Uffindel, CEO at Bright Network: Having Maven involved has definitely changed our mindset and helped us kind of elevate that. Going from a bit of a small scrappy start-up to having a very significant fund such as Maven involved with us just makes us think bigger and more professionally. That means that there is this general kind of shared vision and alignment that has been absolutely delightful because one is naturally skeptical as you go into any relationship I suppose, but to see that aligned with everything pitched before has been absolutely superb.