Digital is coming for Private Equity and Venture Capital,
the same way it is coming for every industry on the planet. However, a revolution in this industry may have the greatest potential for value creation and sweeping shifts in market dominance. Indeed, private capital markets is an industry that underpins industry itself, determining all-important flows of capital and elite talent, hugely influential in executive decision making, and so on. Cash and power aside, one might suggest the vast potential lies in the fact that Private Equity and Venture Capital have gone unchallenged for decades, and as a result, this industry may be especially antiquated in its ways.
In the words that follow, I attempt to communicate the underpinnings of digital revolutions – by way of analogy and what we’ve witnessed in other industries, and by way of mechanics, in terms of the general characteristic these newly crowned digital leaders embody. We will then take a look at the current state of PE / VC and the sentiments of the industry’s thought leaders. To conclude, we’ll envision what the leaders will look like in this new era…
“While Marriott and Hilton own and manage properties, with tens of thousands of employees in separate organizations devoted to enabling and shaping customer experiences, Airbnb’s lean organization sits on top of a virtual AI factory, aggregating data and using carefully crafted algorithms to match users to its digitally tracked and managed community of property owners. And where both Marriott and Hilton are a cluster of groups and brands, each with its own siloed business units and functions equipped with their own information technology, fragmented data, and organizational structure, Airbnb’s lean and agile organization sits on top of its integrated data platform, accumulating customer and process information, mining analytic insights, running rapid experiments, and producing predictive models to inform key decisions.”
