Mike Markus ( ⁠https://x.com/PrivatEquityGuy ) talks with Eric Wiklendt of Speyside Equity ( https://www.linkedin.com/in/ericwiklendt/ ) about Eric's journey and how Speyside has built a highly operational lower-middle-market private equity firm with $937 million of assets under management, 38 total investments, 20 platform investments, operations across 19 countries, and portfolio companies generating approximately $2 billion in revenue.

Timestamps:
0:00 Why Eric loves messy manufacturing deals
1:40 From Detroit operator to private equity investor
4:58 Building Speyside: Fund I, the continuation vehicle, and Fund II
7:35 How PE firms decide fund size and portfolio construction
10:24 Why Elliott backed Speyside's continuation vehicle
12:43 What LPs want now, and why PE is going through a reckoning
15:46 Operational value creation vs. financial engineering
20:03 Why sellers choose Speyside for complex situations
24:09 The red lines: positive EBITDA, size limits, and avoiding bad S-curves
33:34 The “fix and build” playbook
59:29 Independent sponsors, fund models, and the future of dealmaking

Sponsor:
https://capitalpad.com/ - A deal-by-deal private equity investing platform

This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions.