The diligence team asks five questions about your marketing function. You can answer two of them. The other three produce silence, followed by a valuation haircut. This is the reality for the majority of B2B companies approaching an exit, a Series B or C raise, or a strategic acquisition in 2026. The product is strong. The revenue is growing. The team is talented. But the marketing function — the system that generates demand, converts pipeline, retains customers, and produces

Private equity’s weather has improved, but the terrain underneath has never been harder. McKinsey’s Global Private Markets Report 2026 frames it plainly: buyout fund IRRs averaged just 5.7 percent on a pooled basis between 2022 and 2025 — the lowest sustained stretch since the early 2000s. In 2025 alone, top-quartile buyout returns came in at roughly 8 percent, less than half of what the S&P 500 delivered (18 percent) and barely a third of the MSCI World’s 22 percent. Even th