Skip to content

Ep. 2: Data Snacks — The Unlock to Engaging Private Equity Prospects

Summary

Kate Hopkins, founder and CEO of OneGuide, joins Dan Herr and Matt Rooney to explore how Portfolio Operations teams can — and should — directly support deal sourcing. The episode traces the evolution of portfolio ops from its origins in the early 2000s with mega-cap firms like Vista and Insight Partners through its modern expansion into the lower middle market, where firms are building lean ops teams supplemented by non-FTE resources like advisory boards, fractional experts, and curated content.

The core thesis is that portfolio ops is no longer just about value creation in existing portfolio companies — it's increasingly about demonstrating differentiated value to prospective investments. Kate lays out a sourcing enablement funnel that moves from broad content and thought leadership at the top, through virtual events and one-on-one introductions in the middle, to exclusive in-person events at the bottom. Dan reinforces this with examples from his time at Serent Capital, where packaging proprietary portfolio data into what Kate calls "data snacks" — bite-sized, valuable insights from portfolio benchmarking — proved to be one of the most effective prospecting tools available.

The conversation also covers the tactical mechanics of PE-hosted events (virtual roundtables, regional dinners, executive summits), how to invite prospects into portfolio community without overstepping, and the emerging concept of "sourcing enablement" — applying sales enablement principles (battle cards, call scripts, training) to the deal sourcing function.

Key Takeaways

  • Portfolio ops is increasingly a sourcing tool, not just a value creation function — it demonstrates to prospects that a firm brings "more than money to the table"
  • Content should be repurposed across audiences: detailed guides for portfolio companies, blog posts and data snacks for prospects, snippets for LinkedIn and cold outreach sequences
  • Virtual events (monthly functional roundtables) are low-cost opportunities to invite prospects into the portfolio experience
  • Regional dinners offer up to a 50/50 mix of portfolio companies and prospects; large summits should be 99% portfolio with selective prospect invitations
  • Portfolio ops can function as "sourcing enablement" — creating battle cards, training associates, and producing collateral analogous to product marketing and sales enablement in B2B SaaS
  • The most successful sourcing associate Kate worked with always asked for ratios and concrete data points to include in outreach
  • Firms hiring portfolio ops people with revenue operations backgrounds are well-positioned to bridge the ops-sourcing gap

Guest Background

  • Kate Hopkins — Founder and CEO of OneGuide; former Bain consultant and portfolio operations professional at Bain Sale Partners, a lower middle market PE firm focused on B2B software

Topics Discussed

Notable Quotes

"Portfolio ops is becoming table stakes, but there's kind of the expensive people heavy way to do it, and there's the more efficient way to do it." — Kate Hopkins

"Increasingly, portfolio ops is not just about value creation. It's also about showing to attractive investments that you bring more than money to the table." — Kate Hopkins

"The most valuable thing that PortfolioOps does is that it exists and that I can use it as a selling point." — Dan Herr

"Sourcing enablement is to sales enablement. Product marketing could also be done by your operations team." — Kate Hopkins

"Those types of data snacks could also be in kind LinkedIn social media. So you take the same piece of media content and you kind of parse it up as you get further and further from your core of active portfolio companies." — Kate Hopkins

Frameworks & Concepts

  • Sourcing Enablement Funnel — Kate's layered approach: content → virtual events → one-on-one intros → in-person events
  • Data Snacks — Small, productized pieces of intelligence shared with prospects; the term originates in this episode

Cross-References