If you run portfolio operations and chair operating reviews, you want For PE Operating Partners.
Technology is the most consistently mispriced variable in mid-market acquisitions.
We quantify it before you sign. Improve it during the hold. Prove it at exit. The Portfolio Technology Assessment is a four-to-six-week engagement scoped to your fund's specific deal-cycle pain. Output is structured for IC presentation, board reporting, and LP communication, not for the CIO.
The deal cycle
Three stages where technology decides outcomes.
Technology risk shows up at every stage of the deal cycle. Most funds price it implicitly, through management judgment or sector assumptions. The funds that price it explicitly negotiate better terms at entry, drive more EBITDA in the hold, and defend higher multiples at exit.
Price the risk before LOI
Technology due diligence in mid-market M&A consistently surfaces the same gaps: architectural debt that inflates integration cost, compliance exposure that creates regulatory liability post-close, operational fragility that delays EBITDA realization. The acquirers who price these accurately before LOI negotiate better terms.
Drive EBITDA improvement
IT drag follows a consistent pattern: vendor contracts never rationalized, infrastructure scaled for historical volume, technology spend distributed across business units with no central accountability. The aggregate across a 5 to 8 company portfolio is typically larger than any single operational initiative in the VCP.
Prove the technology story
Technology gaps compress exit multiples two ways. Directly, buyers discount valuation for risks they cannot get comfortable with. Indirectly, management time spent defending technology in diligence is time not spent on the business case. Premium multiples go to funds that prepared the story, not assembled it under buyer pressure.
What a GP commissions directly
Two engagement shapes you can scope yourself.
Portfolio-wide work is the operating partner's calendar, paid out of the operating partner's budget. There are two engagements a GP scopes directly, and both produce IC-readable artifacts on a calendar a single GP can approve without portfolio-wide commitment.
IT Due Diligence Initiative
When a deal is under review. Pre-acquisition diligence on a target. Accelerated 10-business-day track available when the deal timeline demands it.
Output: a diligence memo at IC altitude. Tech-debt sized in dollars against EBITDA with confidence range. Integration cost estimate. 100-day post-close action plan if you proceed.
See the Initiative →
Portco Health Check
When one portco needs a sanity read mid-hold, pre-exit, or after a board question the operating partner could not close. From $30K, credited toward the Portfolio Diagnostic if the engagement scales.
Output: a one-page seven-axis scorecard plus backup deck. Same scoring framework Preside runs at fund level, applied to one portco. Recommended next Initiative on the priority axis.
See the Health Check →
For everything else
Per-portco Initiatives across the portfolio and the Portfolio Technology Diagnostic are commissioned by the operating partner, not the GP. If the work is needed but the OP has not engaged Preside yet, the right step is an introduction. The Health Check above is the artifact that most often produces that introduction.
What we typically find
The patterns are consistent across funds.
Technology risk priced into acquisitions implicitly, surfacing post-close at full acquisition cost rather than at negotiated discount. The diligence gap is the largest single source of avoidable post-close cost.
Vendor and licensing spend never rationalized post-acquisition. SaaS sprawl, contract overlap, infrastructure scaled for the pre-acquisition company. Year-one savings opportunity in the 15 to 25% range, the conservative end of published industry research (Forrester, CloudEagle, BetterCloud 2024-2025), flowing directly to EBITDA.
No portfolio-wide visibility. Every other operational metric is visible and comparable across portcos. Technology is a black box per company, which means technology risk is being carried at every company without being actively managed at the fund level.
Operating partner capability mismatch. The partners running the portfolio have deep commercial and operational fluency. Technology depth is the most consistent gap, which compounds across the hold period in every portco simultaneously.
A sample of the artifact
What lands on the IC's desk.
Illustrative excerpt drawn from a Portco Health Check expanded into a multi-portco read. The artifact is sized for IC consumption: two pages of substance, a portco-level scorecard, and a backup deck. No technical narrative. The format matches how the rest of the fund reports decisions.
Investment Committee Memo
Portco Health Check expansion, Fund III, two portcos
Aggregate EBITDA upside identified
$3.2M to $4.6M
Annualized, across two portcos with combined revenue near $220M and combined EBITDA near $45M. 18-month realization horizon.
Exit-multiple drag if unaddressed
0.4x to 0.7x
Illustrative range based on observed buyer-discount patterns in mid-market tech-driven sector exits
Cost to close the technology gap
$420K
One-time, sequenced across both portcos over six months
Key findings, fund-level
- Company A: Three overlapping point solutions sit alongside the existing ERP, adding up to 38% of total tech spend. Consolidating them into the ERP reduces spend by $640K annually with no functional loss.
- Company B: Compliance posture lags sector norms by 14 months. Closing the gap pre-exit removes the most likely buyer-discount lever.
- Cross-portfolio: Eight vendors appear on both companies' contracts at different price tiers and uncoordinated renewal dates. A unified renewal calendar with fund-level commercial leverage reduces combined vendor spend by an estimated $185K annually with no service change to either portco.
- Operating partner load: Combined technology-related operating partner hours estimated at 320 per quarter. Structured advisory absorbs an estimated 60% of that load.
What GPs ask first
The four questions before the call.
We already use a tech DD provider on live deals. How is this different?
Diligence providers price entry. We work all three stages: entry, hold, and exit. The hold-period engagement is where most funds find the largest aggregate EBITDA, and it is the stage diligence shops are not built to deliver. We will not displace your DD provider on live deals if you do not want us to.
Why start with one portco instead of portfolio-wide?
A GP can self-approve a Portco Health Check on one portco; portfolio-wide is the operating partner's calendar and budget. Starting with one keeps the commitment small and produces an IC-readable artifact you can act on alone. If the artifact lands well, the Diagnostic scales the same scoring framework to the rest of the portfolio through your OP. The Health Check fee credits toward that scale-up.
What's the operating-team time commitment for a Health Check?
Approximately 6 to 8 hours of portco CFO and CIO time across one to two weeks. The operating partner is informed but not required to drive. We come with the questions structured, we do not require a discovery period to learn the portco.
How defensible are the dollar-magnitude estimates?
Every dollar-magnitude line is tied to a specific vendor contract, license utilization data point, or infrastructure-sizing analysis at the portco. Confidence ranges are explicit. The Health Check artifact is what lands in the IC packet, so the numbers carry the same scrutiny as any other operating model line.
90-second GP scoping
Three questions. A scoping preview of your portfolio technology exposure.
Pick the deal stage you are working through, the pattern you see most across the portfolio, and the urgency. You get a fund-level preview on screen and a link emailed for the record. Partner-to-partner conversation comes after, on request, not by default.
Question 1 of 3
Where in the deal cycle is this most pressing?
Pick the stage where mispricing technology hurts the fund most right now.
Question 2 of 3
What is the version of the technology problem you see most across the portfolio?
Question 3 of 3
What is the urgency?
Analyzing the pattern across the fund.
About 10 seconds. We are not asking for your email yet.
Your scoping preview
Portfolio Technology Assessment preview
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A styled page with the full preview, bookmarkable, that you can share with a partner or attach to a deal file. Lands in your inbox within a couple of minutes.
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