Private equity · Decision brief 01
Six decisions your executive team is making right now — and what the evidence says about each.
Written for the deal partner at a middle-market private equity firm — the seat that sponsors an investment to the committee and whose name is on the memo. Each decision names the seat that owns it and the seat that contests it, and the brief closes with what the investment committee will say when you bring it to them.
7 pages · Evidence as of October 21, 2026 · PDF
Asked three times for one private company's revenue and EBITDA, an assistant returned a figure, a margin and a live citation. The source was real. The number was real. It was a different company.
Not a model inventing numbers from nothing, which is the failure everyone already guards against. A cited, specific, internally confident answer about the wrong entity — twice, with working links, and a 90% spread between its own three answers. The second engine, asked the identical question, said plainly that the figure is not publicly disclosed. The brief carries both, and the two public-company controls that make the result a failure rather than a limitation.
What is in it
- How much diligence to buy, and where to point itWhere a sector's public comps disclose the lever you are underwriting, you can triangulate cheaply. Where they do not, primary diligence is the only route. Four sectors were measured before this brief and they do not behave the same way — and the rule that falls out is per-phrase, not per-sector.
- What to underwrite the growth lever asSome levers have public comps that demonstrably moved them and disclosed it. Others are asserted across an entire sector and appear in no filing. Net revenue retention is disclosed by 34 of roughly 6,900 filers and falling; retail media is up 3.6× and genuinely reported. One belongs in a base case and one does not.
- What to shift into reps, warranties, escrow and earnoutRepresentations and warranties insurance rose elevenfold as a share of all filers since 2015. Earnouts rose two and a half times. Working capital adjustments — the mechanism that settles numbers both sides can compute — fell 31%. Risk is moving onto the mechanisms that cover what cannot be verified.
- What discount concentration deserves, and whether a benchmark existsEleven of twelve large consumer filers publish their exposure to one retailer. None of the twelve publish their exposure to one brand. In the segment where it was measured directly, top-customer concentration ran from 23% to 74%. There is no normal, so the discount is argued rather than benchmarked.
- Whether demand is defensible, and whether your own team can see itPrimary measurement for this brief, with two public-company controls. Across twenty-five generations on companies whose figures sit in an annual report, neither engine cited sec.gov once. On a private target, one engine returned another company's financials with working citations.
- Whether an exit multiple can be underwritten at allTwo acquirers in a three-year window disclosed a multiple. A $1.95bn purchase and a $1.2bn purchase were both completed with no revenue published for either. Meanwhile "strategic alternatives" grew 60% in share of filers, so deal supply is rising while computability is not.
It closes with the executive decision matrix — CEO, CFO, CRO, CPO, Legal and Risk — each with something specific to do in this category, not a generic lens.
What it is not
- Not a vendor ranking. It measures decisions and evidence, not which company is better.
- Not a forecast. Where something is an observation of one window, it says so.
- Not a market-size report. It will not tell you what any of this is worth to you in revenue.
- Not padded. 7 pages because that is what the evidence filled.
How the evidence is handled
Every figure is sourced. Where a number could not be sourced, the brief says so and gives none. Where two sources disagree on direction, it says that rather than picking the flattering one. Where a widely quoted statistic comes from a party with a commercial position, it is flagged — including where that flag weakens a point the brief is making.
The decision-maker and every decision were fixed before any source was read, and were not revised to fit what came back.
None of these your decision?
The catalogue briefs answer the decisions a category shares. A custom brief answers yours: one decision, one decision-maker, your market, with the question and what would prove it wrong registered before any data is pulled. See the custom brief →
Licensing. A brief is sold for use inside the buying organization — read it, quote it internally, build on it in your own planning. It may not be resold, published in full, or redistributed outside your organization. Quoting a figure externally is fine with attribution to CULT+MATH and the as-of date, which is the part that makes the figure meaningful.