The founder who built something from nothing, wrote the cheques when revenue couldn't cover them, lay awake running cash scenarios at 3am. The operating partner with eight companies on my plate, drowning in spreadsheets and polished C-suite decks, trying to figure out which portfolio company was about to go sideways. The investor who put serious money on the line and waited to see if the thesis would hold.
I have sympathy for every seat at this table. I know the constraints. I've felt them.
The founder sold expecting massive growth. Sometimes it feels that they got a 100-day plan with no history and oversight with no end. The operating partner knows exactly what good looks like, and knows it's a relentless push to get there, while seven other companies are competing for their attention. The investor made an eight or nine figure commitment. They can do the financial gymnastics. They can structure the bolt-ons. What they can't do is reach inside the portfolio and create operational value from the outside. That's supposed to be everyone else's job. And it's not happening.
There is a lot of frustration. Everyone is stuck in the same broken model.
Here's what that model looks like in 2026... and 2016... and 2006
A portfolio company sends monthly data, usually Excel files, Powerpoint, sometimes a dashboard heavy with narration and context. The C-suite presents a narrative - sometimes board meetings are like a series of monologues. The operating partner tries to triangulate the truth from incomplete information across eight companies simultaneously.
By the time something looks wrong in the numbers, it's been wrong for 60 days. The early signals were there, in the pipeline, in the customer conversations, in the founder's gut - but they never made it into the board pack.
It's a reactive model. Firefighting. Flying in to "fix" things that could've been prevented if anyone had seen them coming.
The Reality
This isn't value creation. It's damage limitation.
We fund the future, we operate in the past
Marc Andreessen wrote his Techno-Optimist Manifesto a few years ago, a full-throated defence of the techno-capitalist machine as "the engine of perpetual material creation, growth, and abundance."
The PE and VC world loved it. Shared it everywhere. These are the people funding the future, betting on technology to transform every industry.
So why hasn't it transformed private equity and venture capital?
Why is the value creation playbook still spreadsheets, old data, "let's wait and see" and 100-day plans? Why are operating partners still reading static decks instead of live signals? Why are the people who fund AI companies still running their own operations like it's 2010?
It's time the techno-optimists turned this technology on themselves.
Not when the tools exist to see around corners. Not when ML can forecast pipeline risk before it shows up in the financials. Not when real-time data sharing could replace the monthly reporting theatre that burns everyone out.
3x isn't good enough
Not when the technology exists to create a new paradigm of investing. Marrying what PE and VC have brought to the table for years with a new firepower that this category of investing has not seen.
Think about it this way: a person can run 5, 10 maybe 20 miles. Give them a bike and suddenly 150, 200 miles is the target. The rider didn't change. The capability did.
Now think about the minds already in PE and VC. The pattern recognition. The deal instincts. The operational experience. These are serious people who've built serious value for investors. Give them the right technology - real forecasting, live signals, predictive intelligence - and watch what they can do. That expertise, multiplied by this firepower, explodes into the market.
That's not incremental improvement. That's a new category of returns.
The founders who took the risk deserve partners who operate at their level - not above them with dictates, not behind them reading rearview mirrors.
The operating partners juggling eight companies deserve signals, not noise. Early warnings, not post-mortems. The chance to do the work they know how to do, instead of chasing data.
The investors who put up serious money deserve exponential returns - and those returns are there for the firms willing to actually create value, not just measure it.
So we built the firepower
Not another dashboard. Not a chatbot bolted onto your data. Four years of ML forecasting - the hard, unglamorous work of predicting what's going to happen, not summarising what already did.
At Planr.com we built intelligence that sits inside the operating rhythm, not above it. That treats the founder's insight as signal, not noise. That gives the operating partner early warnings instead of post-mortems - the chance to act at 10 days, not 60.
What AI-Native Actually Means
Not a layer on top. Not a chat interface that makes your old data feel new. A platform built from the ground up to forecast, to warn, to create time where there wasn't any.
We built it for all three seats at the table. For the founder who wants a partner, not a supervisor. For the operating partner who needs to increase their bandwidth, heighten their challenge to what's happening and see what's coming without the monologue of confirmation bias. For the investor who's ready to leave the old model behind and move towards relentless higher returns.
So here's the question to those of us who invest in private companies
If you believe in the techno-capitalist machine, why not point it at yourself?
Share the data. Trust the models. Move faster than the spreadsheet and the board meeting cadence allows.
Be the PE that founders wish you were. Generate the returns that propel you out past the pack.
This isn't about just beating 3x. This is the opportunity to be the prime mover in a paradigm shift of how to create returns through an intersection of technology and markets. The people leading firms that see it will define the next era. The ones that don't will wonder what happened.
The firepower is here. It's time to build.
Ready to See the Firepower?
Planr gives PE firms the intelligence to act at 10 days, not 60. See what AI-native portfolio management looks like.
