Insight certainty 4/5 debate potential 3/5

Private equity firms operating their portfolio companies is never a good scenario

Henry Schuck · EP 512: $70M ARR B2B SaaS with DiscoverOrg CEO Henry Schuck · Dec 18, 2016 · at 4:26

Henry Schuck, CEO of DiscoverOrg, talks about how PE firms struggling to operate companies creates acquisition opportunities.

0:00 / 0:08exact quote · 8.4s
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“Some PE firms think that they're operators. And this one was being operated by the PE owners and that's never a good scenario.”

quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →

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