Private Equity Data Guy

Private equity meets data. Conversations with deal teams, operating partners, and portfolio company leaders about the data problems that kill deals, slow exits, and destroy value.Hosted by Graeme Crawford, founder of Crawford McMillan. 20 years leading data programs at Fortune 100 companies. Now helping PE-backed companies fix data before exits so the numbers hold up under scrutiny.New episodes cover diligence red flags, value creation playbooks, and the real stories behind successful (and failed) transactions.

Private Equity Data Guy is a business podcast hosted by Graeme Crawford, with 48 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80.

Graeme Crawford hosts Private Equity Data Guy, a business show with 48 episodes published.

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  Episode #47

  Why Private Equity Operators Still Cannot Find Their Real EBITDA

  Sep 30, 202636 minS1

  In this episode I talk with Afrozy Ara, founder and CEO of LuminaData, an AI transformation platform for finance operations backed by Techstars and Berkeley SkyDeck. Afrozy started her career as an electrical engineer, then spent over a decade in enterprise consulting at firms including Mu Sigma, where she worked directly with Fortune 500 finance teams and built out diagnostic practices that benchmark how finance work actually happens inside large organizations. She started LuminaData a year and a half ago, beginning with a single problem inside reconciliations, and her founding thesis is that AI adoption is not the same as AI transformation. We talk about where the money actually hides inside a finance team, from duplicate invoices and unpaid remittances to the nonstandard contracts that large customers like Amazon force onto their vendors. Afrozy explains why giving a team of ten people the same AI tool can produce ten different answers without a shared process behind them, and why she still keeps a human in the loop for every exception rather than letting an agent make deterministic decisions on its own. She also walks through the three step method her team uses inside a client: look across the whole business, pick one area and go deep, then show a small result fast to build trust before scaling the work across the order to cash process. Chapters: 00:19 - The Agent: Reimagining Your Process 04:11 - Thesis: AI adoption is not AI transformation 08:15 - AI in the Enterprise — From Copilots to Capturing Value 20:56 - Humans in the Loop: Designing AI Agents with Human Oversight 25:05 - Connecting platforms to reveal business performance and KPIs 33:21 - Personal Writing, Unfinished Books, and AI Companies Mentioned LuminaData Techstars Berkeley SkyDeck Mu Sigma Capital One Amazon Ramp Brex QuickBooks Anthropic Websites Mentioned linkedin.com/in/afrozy-ara-57527612 luminadata.ai Guest Information Afrozy Ara is the founder and CEO of LuminaData, an AI platform for finance operations backed by Techstars and Berkeley SkyDeck. She began her career as an electrical engineer before moving into enterprise consulting, spending over a decade at firms including Mu Sigma, where she partnered with Fortune 500 finance teams on data and process problems. She started LuminaData a year and a half ago, beginning with a single problem inside reconciliations, and her work today centers on her belief that AI adoption is not the same as AI transformation. You can find Afrozy on LinkedIn. Guest's Full Name: Afrozy Ara Company / Organization: LuminaData Website or Main Page: Not provided Guest Social Media Links: https://www.linkedin.com/in/afrozy-ara-57527612/

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  Episode #46

  What Actually Breaks Private Equity Portfolio Companies

  Sep 24, 202652 minS1

  In this episode I sit down with Rich Kershaw, a technology due diligence specialist who has looked at over 250 companies for private equity and venture capital investors. We talk about why the technology itself is rarely the real problem inside a portfolio company. Rich explains that the org chart exposes decision making gaps that technical documents alone will not show you. This conversation gets into where large language models help and where they fall short. Rich explains why he treats AI like a smart but inexperienced intern who still needs clear direction. He shares what he is building with Billy, a platform designed to spot gaps in a company's operations before they turn into bigger problems for investors. Chapters: 00:42 - The Hidden Data Problem Behind Value Creation 02:28 - A Circuitous Route into Private Equity 11:20 - When Technology Is — or Isn't — the Problem 17:21 - Org Charts: What They Reveal About Governance and Decision‑Making 27:19 - AI, LLMs and Due Diligence: What They Can — and Can’t — Automate 37:24 - Origin of Billy: Scaling the Service with LLMs 49:57 - Where to find Billy and Diligency — contact, beta sign-up & next steps Companies Mentioned Octopus Investments, Octopus Energy, Lecky Kershaw, Diligency Consortium, Billy, Microsoft, GitHub, Monday.com , Atlassian, Salesforce, Intercom Websites Mentioned richkershaw.com , diligency.org , leckykershaw.com , billy.works Guest Information Rich Kershaw spent his career on both sides of the technology table, first as a CTO and product leader, then running technology and product due diligence for venture capital and private equity investors through Lecky Kershaw. He co-founded the Diligency Consortium, a group of due diligence specialists working across multiple disciplines, and he is now building Billy, a platform that tracks portfolio companies against established operational standards between funding rounds. Rich can be found at richkershaw.com and Billy at billy.works.

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  Episode #44

  Why Private Equity Firms Call Customers Before Closing

  Sep 9, 202636 minS1

  down with Dan Granger, who runs the private equity practice at T4, a voice of customer research firm that ended up in private equity almost by accident. He spends his time inside letter of intent windows, calling the customers of companies my listeners are trying to buy or fix. We talked about what those customers say once nobody from the target company is on the line. Dan walked me through real deals where customer interviews changed the outcome. One packaging company lost twenty five million dollars off its price after customers described new competitors already undercutting them. Another deal died after a flooring company's dealers reported a failed software rollout that nobody in the boardroom had flagged. We also talked about where artificial intelligence helps his research team and where it still falls short. Timestamps Chapters: 00:14 - AI's struggle to connect unstructured data 01:08 - Guest Introduction — Dan Granger & T4's Private Equity Practice 10:59 - Case Study — Hidden Competitive Threats Uncovered Through Customer Interviews 19:38 - Customer Diligence Red Flags 28:24 - AI in Customer Research — Tools, Limits, and Human Judgment 34:50 - Closing Remarks and Contact Info Companies Mentioned T4, Keefer Associates, Medallia, SAP, ChatGPT Websites Mentioned https://www.keeferassociates.com https://www.linkedin.com Guest Information Dan Granger leads the private equity practice at T4, a voice of customer research firm found at keeferassociates.com . He previously worked in customer research consulting and spent time at Medallia during its time as a private technology company before moving into private equity diligence work. He interviews target company customers during letter of intent windows to surface risks and growth opportunities before deals close.

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  Episode #43

  The Feeling Every Operator Has Before the Numbers Turn

  Sep 3, 202644 minS1

  In this episode I sat down with Regan Inkster, a strategist who has spent 25 years building strategy for Global 1000 companies and served three times as a chief architect. We talked about a pattern he found in his own research on organizational coherence: the distance between what a company says internally and what employees actually experience appears in performance data before it appears in the financial numbers. He calls this warning window about two quarters, and he built an AI model that reads language across a company to measure it. We covered real cases, including a merger that destroyed about 75 percent of the deal's value and a widely recognized coffee company where the space between leadership and frontline teams matched swings in market value for years. Regan shared advice for private equity operating partners: close the loop between decisions and the reasons behind them, and check whether the dashboard rewards match what leadership wants the business to improve. Timestamps 00:02:26 Coherence drifts before financial results 00:04:13 Sensing dysfunction inside an organization 00:08:00 Building the coherence measurement platform 00:16:30 CEO strategy rollout builds agreement 00:18:24 Starbucks coherence linked to market value 00:21:23 Private equity ownership raises mismatch risk 00:32:59 Many AI initiatives fail to deliver 00:41:16 Closing the loop after decisions Companies Mentioned IBM Capital One Oracle Starbucks Fidelity International Systems World Pay Netflix Blockbuster The New York Times HBO Websites Mentioned Amazon: https://www.amazon.com Barnes and Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com Glassdoor: https://www.glassdoor.com Reddit: https://www.reddit.com Indeed: https://www.indeed.com Guest Information Regan Inkster spent 25 years building strategy for Global 1000 companies and served three times as a chief architect. He worked as a global go to market and value creation leader at Oracle and as a country lead for emerging tech and AI at a global systems integrator. He wrote the book Two Quarter Warning, which describes how organizational coherence drops about two quarters before financial results do.

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  Episode #42

  What Buyers Actually See Before the LOI (And What the SIM Hides)

  Aug 26, 202645 minS1

  Jeremiah Wanzell has spent over two decades scaling consumer brands inside Fortune 100 companies like Hugo Boss, Calvin Klein, and Steve Madden before moving into private equity as an operating partner. In this conversation, he breaks down what buyers actually see in consumer deals before the LOI, what the CIM almost never tells you, and why he built Deal Reveal, a free self-service scorecard that grades a deal across six weighted value drivers in under ten minutes. We get into the data gap between large enterprise and mid-market portfolio companies, the real reasons Allbirds collapsed and Nike stumbled, and what multi-channel diversity actually means in practice. Jeremiah also walks us through the Capezio acquisition, a fifth-generation family brand that another firm passed on, and why a clear deal thesis and niche market dominance made it one of the best deals in the consumer PE space. Chapters: 00:08 - Understanding Customer Base and Product Value 07:27 - Understanding the Gaps in Revenue Stories 12:16 - The Digital Opportunity in Business 18:22 - Navigating Business Sales: Understanding the Wave of Institutional Capital 24:38 - The Importance of Channel Diversity in E-Commerce 34:05 - Cautionary Tales: Lessons from Allbirds and Nike 40:57 - The Future of CPG Brands and Market Opportunities Guest Information Jeremiah Wanzell is a consumer brand operator and private equity advisor with 22 years of experience at Hugo Boss, Calvin Klein, and Steve Madden. He works as an operating partner with PE firms in the consumer sector and originated the Capezio acquisition for Argon, which won M&A Deal of the Year. He recently launched Deal Reveal, a consumer M&A scorecard available at growthmindsetadvisors.com . Company: Growth Mindset Advisors LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeremiah-wanzell/ Website: https://growthmindsetadvisors.com/ Companies Mentioned Hugo Boss Calvin Klein / PVH Steve Madden Capezio Allbirds Nike Adidas On Running Hoka Brooks Skims Warby Parker Amazon / Whole Foods DSW Macy's Shopify Websites Mentioned growthmindsetadvisors.com (Deal Reveal scorecard) Key Takeaways The CIM shows revenue. It rarely shows revenue quality by channel, customer concentration, or margin by door. That gap is where deals get repriced or killed. Multi-channel diversity is non-negotiable. Brands that lean entirely on DTC or heavily on Amazon carry structural risk that buyers will price in. A clear deal thesis before you enter a process is what separates a fast pass from a real opportunity. Capezio got passed by one firm simply because they did not understand the dance wear category. Start the exit preparation process one to three years before you want to sell. The difference between a 2x and an 8x is often just how ready the business is when it hits the market.

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