The business of a private equity fund such as Enterprise Investors is all about seeking growth. We buy retailers with a view to opening new stores and developing e-commerce, we put money into financial services to develop new products and we acquire shares in production plants to grow their output and capture new markets. Recently, digitalization has become the common denominator for all such undertakings in virtually every industry we look at. While this may mean different things depending on the industry, it is clear that technology now plays a crucial part in any investment project from the analysis stage, through discussions with the management team on the plan for value creation and during ongoing monitoring after the acquisition.

The key challenge that we face nowadays when reviewing potential investee companies is that, even in historically growing firms, very often a business plan that assumes “more of the same” for future years is not good enough. The pace, scale and magnitude of changes facing today’s entrepreneurs are far greater than even a mere 20 years ago. 

At Enterprise Investors we help management teams cope with these challenges. Together with a selected group of industry experts working with us from the supervisory board level, we provide strategic leadership and advice to our portfolio companies to make sure they always respond to market changes and thus stay ahead of the curve in terms of development needs facing their business in the 21st century.