On this episode, Jay Nathan (Founder of Customer Imperative) joins Paul Stansik to share how companies can be more intentional in building intimacy and delivering value to their customers. We talk about how his consulting firm builds customer success teams, how business leaders get this wrong, and the baby-steps that anyone can take to "make the renewal a no-brainer."

Jimmy sits down with Dean Brown, CEO of Ipro Tech. Dean discusses his upbringing in a military family, his education in Industrial Psychology, the serendipity of a career, his love of products and product strategy, his experience founding, scaling, and ultimately selling his startup, why culture is so important to him in business, and much more.

In part 3 of a 3 part series on Product Strategy, Jim and Cici continue the discussion of how product strategy ties into value creation, and how specifically as a PE firm, we monitor our portfolio companies’ product strategy through taking a detailed look at their product roadmaps. We discuss how we conduct Product Strategy Reviews – the objectives, who’s in the room, and what we actually cover. We talk about why we’re focused on outcome-driven product roadmaps, how we work with our portfolio companies to prioritize what actually gets built and why that’s so critical when we’re allocating scarce resources to create value.

In part 2 of a 3 part series on Product Strategy, Jim is joined by Cici to discuss the private equity investor's perspective on how and why products get built. Living in a world of limited resources, we discuss the framework that we use to help shape the discussions with our portfolio companies about prioritizing their products and features. We talk about market segments versus markets, the Ansoff matrix and Geoffrey Moore's famous "Bowling Alley" strategy.

In part 1 of a 3 part series on Product Strategy, Jim is joined by Cici to discuss the three levers of value creation - risk mitigation, revenue growth, and cost reduction, and how we think about the three in the portfolio. Jimmy joins as well to add the People dimension.

On this episode, Keith Hadley from the Table Group joins Paul Stansik to chat about how we build aligned C-suite teams and healthy portfolio companies. We cover what healthy organizations do differently, why most team offsites are not time well spent, and how to tell if you're on (or leading) a dysfunctional team.

Devin and Jim kick off the new year with our annual predictions episode.  Come have a listen as we opine on what 2020 has in store for Private Equity.

Jimmy Holloran talks with Stacey Kacek, OnePlus Systems CEO. They discuss her early career as an engineer at Motorola, her transition into leadership, and her perspective on being a CEO. Along the way, they cover key influences in her life, lessons learned, and as well as advice for aspiring CEOs.

Jim recently got massively over-billed by Hertz, prompting a discussion about what happens to customers when process automation goes off the rails. Ryan Milligan jumps in with a Zappos story that will warm your heart.

As part of our continuing People Operations series, ParkerGale Principals Jimmy and Paul dive into the 9box, a talent management framework commonly used to assess an organization’s breadth and depth of talent. Jimmy and Paul cover why this matters, how to effectively review an organization’s entire talent base, and why it pays for investors to be involved in the process.

Devin sits down with Cici to discuss some easy but very important things you should be doing to extract deeper customer and market insight into your software products.

Partner Ryan Milligan talks with Mike Trasatti, CEO of DealerBuilt and Bill Lamm of Presidio Technology Partners about how a deal really gets done. Covering everything from the banker signing up to represent DealerBuilt to ParkerGale courting and successfully completing the deal with management.

Come have a listen as Stephen Tallamy CTO of EditShare talks about strategies for making technology transitions for complicated software platforms.

Hiring technical people is hard when you don’t know all the buzzwords and acronyms. Devin and Jim help you with good process and some helpful questions to ask when you are hiring Engineering and Software Development leaders.

Continuing our on-going series of interviews with ParkerGale portfolio company CEOs, Jimmy interviews Tom Obermaier, CEO of Rippe and Kingston. We talk baseball, growing up in New York, leadership lessons from President Washington, rising to Chief Risk Officer at Citi Bank at the time of the financial crisis, and his evolution as a CEO at RDC and Rippe.

Jim talks with fellow Babson College Alum, current portfolio company CTO, Tom Shore about application software from the early 80s through today.  We talk Digital Equipment PDP/11s all the way through the current no-code fascination.

We talk to PG Principal Kara Master about her journey from the model UN and a career in journalism to joining the deal team at ParkerGale.

Buckle your seatbelts for a fast-paced conversation with Dave Kellogg. Dave and I first met back in the early 80s at Ingres, when I was a pre-sales engineer and Dave was a technical support rep. We’ve each spent over 25 years in enterprise software, in mixed roles that involve both technology and sales & marketing. We reconnected recently and met up up in Chicago at ParkerGale’s “intergalactic headquarters” for a pretty broad-ranging conversation about a recent blog post that Dave wrote (Things to Avoid in Selecting an Executive Job at a Startup) along with a lot of interaction about differences between PE-land and VC-land. Come have a listen -- where else are you going to hear the phrase "Axe Battle of Differentiation"?

In the kickoff to the new People Operations Series, ParkerGale Principals Jimmy and Paul provide an overview of ParkerGale’s People Ops team. Having worked together at Bain, they bring some history together to the firm and their work leading all things people, talent, and culture across the portfolio. They dive into how ParkerGale thinks about building a cohesive leadership team, hiring great talent, and creating learning and development opportunities across the portfolio. They also set up what to expect over the coming months in the on-going People Ops Series.

Jim and Jimmy talk to ParkerGale Operating Principal, Paul Stansik -- DECA medal winner and ex-professional Lacrosse player.

Guest hosts Jimmy Holloran and Ryan Milligan invite Andy Hulett onto the funcast to discuss the benefits of outsourced HR for small, growing businesses. Turns out there’s a lot more to it than managing benefits and payroll. 

Guest host Jimmy Holloran talks with EditShare CEO Conrad Clemson.   Find out how a physics major from William & Mary ended up working as a private equity CEO.

More madness with the Mad Scotsman, Alan Williamson and special guest Tom Shore.  We talk about the just how much automation and software tooling do you need to write applications.   The big social media software companies would claim that nothing short of continuous delivery is enough.   But is this really necessary for smaller companies that are delivering enterprise-class applications?

Guest host Jimmy Holloran talks with Jim about the bevy of useless email solicitations that we get after every deal announcement.  We talk about the PE 2/20 model and how it applies to buying services from vendors -- and the right and wrong ways to pitch PE funds.

In our latest episode, we talk with Rick Noble, CEO of Aircraft Technical Publishers. He has led several market-leading digital publishing organizations over the course of his career, holding positions that include CEO of Triumph Learning and Haights Cross Communications, CEO of Blackboard Engage, CEO of Medical Media Holdings, and President & CEO of Thomson Healthcare.