MSP owners fear private equity buyers will slash staff and costs. But one PE sponsor told its portfolio company to hire a senior culture leader instead, a move Mike Cody emphasized as critical for scaling a dispersed team. Some PE firms cut; others invest in culture.
I talk to a lot of MSP owners that are like, yeah, I'm gonna sell, but there's no way I'm gonna sell to private equity because they just want to cut all the people and, uh, you know, and then cut, you know, cut everything and they're gonna cut the business and all that. Uh, so it sounds like you're saying that that's not true.
Look, I think it's, I think it's true in some places. I mean, I remember, again, I can only speak to my experience, um, and I grew up in this space. My very first board meeting, I remember sitting there And there's a guy on our board, Mike Cody, he's a former CEO of Dell SecureWorks and just a rock star. And he said, you know, I think if you're going to build a business like this and scale it, culture is going to be critical. You know, we're highly dispersed. We all live in this 2-dimensional Teams world or Zoom world or whatever your productivity tool of choice is. And so getting culture right is going to be really important. And he said, I think you need to hire somebody that is an extension of you and your voice to drive culture across the business. And so my experience, Brian, was kind of the opposite in that our sponsor has not said cut. In fact, our sponsor has said, you know, out of the gate, they were like, go hire somebody that really knows comms and culture. And that's not a cheap hire and they don't drive revenue for crying out loud.
