In my final round interview at Palladium Equity Partners, I told the founder that one day I'd either take his job or start my own fund. Few have the luxury or conviction to do so, but I know every investor has dreamt of running their own firm one day. Generally, they start with the same two pillars: raising capital and sourcing deals. Those are non-negotiables. But if I were starting an AI-forward PE firm today, my #1 focus would actually be on content.

Why? Because you kill three birds with one stone. Content builds LP trust, deal flow, and better returns at scale.

My last LinkedIn post hit 560,000 impressions. That’s not just a vanity metric — it’s a proof point. The opportunity for PE firms to leverage content is massive, yet still wildly underutilized.

Why Content Is a Competitive Edge for PE

Easier Fundraising from LPs

• LPs need differentiation. Very few PE firms have an "investing edge"; they're just money managers. I've talked to several LPs who said that Palladium Equity Partners is one of the few funds that could claim differentiation with its Hispanic angle. Thought leadership and content offer real and quantifiable advantages. You can easily measure website visits and content engagement, while it takes years to show that your PE firm has "top-tier culture" (employee churn).
• LPs want conviction. They can easily see that you understand markets, sectors, and future trends.
• Speed up relationship building. You can now stay top of mind for LPs more often than if you only reach out to them ahead of a new fund.

Deal Flow & Company Relationships

• Founders will seek you. I've founded an ABA therapy company. If a PE firm showed me their investment thesis in their space. I'd be so excited to proactively talk to them! I would likely reach out to them without even talking to a banker first. I can't tell you how ridiculously excited I was when I was building Teamwork, and a16z released a thesis on "Healthcare x Finance". Even though I was sure other investors also were interested, they made it public.
• Bankers will passively remember you and include you in more processes.
• A market map or thesis article positions you as the smartest buyer in the management presentation before you’ve even spoken.

Talent & Advisors

• Content attracts operators, advisors, and potential hires who align with your philosophy, and you get an excuse to produce content with them or to promote them.
• The best people want to join firms with a voice.

Better Returns

• Help portfolio companies with distribution. If you have the audience to re-share or promote a new service line or entry into a new market, then you're helping grow their P&L in an extremely cost-effective way.
• Enter at lower valuations. Founders will agree to lower valuations to work with investors they are excited by. I'm certainly an example. We took a lower valuation with Pear Ventures, and I know it's because we were inceptioned by all their videos of portfolio companies vouching for them and their really fun founder events.

Why the Opportunity Is Now

The timing has never been better for PE firms to step into thought leadership.

• VC has figured it out. Sequoia and a16z both run polished podcasts and publish frameworks that founders and LPs actually read. YC has built a content machine that makes every portfolio company feel like part of a movement.
• PE has not. To this day, no private equity firm is consistently viewed as a distinct thought leader online. There’s no “go-to” PE blog, podcast, or newsletter. Content from PE tends to be buried in press releases or generic firm updates.
• The whitespace is wide open. That means the first PE firms to truly lean into content will stand out dramatically to LPs, bankers, and founders — not just as investors, but as trusted guides to entire industries.

This can be the Sequoia/a16z moment for PE — the question is which firms will seize it.

Leverage Your Own Existing Data for a Content Strategy

You don’t need a media empire on day one. Start small, but systematize it so the machine compounds. You can build the content muscle over time. You already have a warchest of great content! Here’s the lowest hanging fruit:

1. Convert Internal Memos into External Posts

• Your investment committee (IC) memos already contain sector analysis, market maps, and investment frameworks.
• With minor editing (remove confidential details, reframe for external readers), these easily become blogs, LinkedIn carousels, or contribute to a thesis page on your website.
• What’s “internal rigor” to you is “golden insight” to the market.

2. Video Tape Your Events

• Between the hours chained to your desk, there are some truly fun things that very few humans outside PE get to experience. Record it and share it. I've gotten to go to some off-sites, including skiing for a week in Big Sky. We even had a holiday party where George Lopez did a comedy skit for us.
• Show off the founder/CXO events as well!

3. Convert Your Firm's Deal Pipelines into Data Visualizations

• Show off how many deals you review every month/quarter/year.
• Itch every founder's competitive side by showing the actual funnel and how selective you are in actually making investments.
• Offer peace of mind to bankers and founders by showing modest to high conversion rates from LOI to close.

Beginner's Guide To Implementation

• Level 1 (Easy): Blogs. Every PE firm has a treasure trove of content already. Take all those IC memos, investor relations collateral, $300k presentations from BCG/LEK/McKinsey, and off-site investment thesis presentations into blog posts on your site (e.g., “Why we're excited to buy an ABA Therapy company" or "Growth trends across therapy verticals”). The goal is to establish your firm’s unique point of view. You can use a simple Content Management System (CMS) tool like Sanity that makes it very easy for any Associate, VP, or MD to log in and post blogs from their own work. If you're too lazy for even that, just use Medium.
• Level 2 (Medium): Newsletters & LinkedIn (Social Media). Create a monthly email newsletter to LPs, bankers, and company executives. Beehive makes newsletters easy to implement and is used by popular finance newsletters like ExecSum. Use AI to chunk up larger, thoughtful blog posts into tinier social media posts. The goal is to get your deal team to build their content muscle and create your brand's distribution channel and “deal thesis lane”. If you need a list of every investor and M&A banker, reach out, and Scend can provide that list!
• Level 3 (Advanced): Data Visualization. Everyone loves a good chart. It tells a story, and you can leverage that to tell your firm's story. There are free versions of Tableau or Datawrapper that can easily visualize your deal pipelines in really compelling ways. PE firms have access to a lot of private data that people would eat up!
• Level 4 (Expert): Podcasts & Video. Interview operators, bankers, and fellow investors in your focus sectors. Talk about deals as case studies like they do at Harvard Business School. Repurpose audio into blog transcripts, clips for LinkedIn, and graphics for newsletters. Build brand equity beyond text.

The AI Edge

An AI-forward PE firm doesn’t just publish — it systematizes:

• AI can draft first versions of blogs from IC notes.
• AI can summarize podcasts into transcripts and pull 5 viral LinkedIn snippets.
• AI can auto-generate simple sector market maps and company lists. If you want truly comprehensive market maps or origination lists, talk to us!

This means a small team can look like a full-blown media machine. Even small PE firms have the margin to hire one or two strong content creators.

Closing Thought

The PE firms that win the next decade won’t just be the ones with the sharpest investors or biggest funds. They’ll be the ones with the loudest, smartest, and most consistent digital voice.

If you’re starting or owning a PE firm today, your content strategy may be just as important as your deal pipeline. The lack of mainstream PE voices makes the ROI of investing in content today the highest it may ever be.