Private equity has an exit problem. And it has created a time problem.
McKinsey puts some numbers around the problem. The average buyout-backed company sold in 2025 had been held for 6.6 years, up from 6.1 years during the 2011 to 2020 period. More than 16,000 PE-backed companies — about 52% of the total — had already been held for four years or longer, the highest percentage on record.
And LPs are still waiting for cash. Distributions equaled only about 6% of private equity assets under management in the 12 months ended June 2025, compared with an average of 16% from 2015 through 2019.
The exit market has improved, but not enough to clear that backlog. For many sponsors, the old playbook — buy, professionalize and sell in three to five years — has given way to a different one: buy, hold and find additional ways to compound value while waiting for an acceptable exit. Longer holds do more than delay distributions. The longer a sponsor owns a company, the more value the underlying business has to create to protect the return.
Sponsors have a familiar set of value-creation levers to pull. They can trim expenses, invest in new equipment and production capacity, launch new products, raise prices and pursue add-on acquisitions. In a buy-and-build strategy, they can also create multiple arbitrage by buying EBITDA cheaply and having it revalued inside a larger platform that ultimately trades at a higher multiple.
Those remain powerful tools. But they are also well understood and, in many cases, already embedded in the original investment thesis. Once the obvious cost savings have been captured, the plant has been upgraded, pricing has been addressed and the most attractive add-ons have been acquired, where does the next leg of value creation come from Increasingly, it has to come from the commercial side of the business — finding more customers, winning more business from existing customers and giving the sales organization a better way to compete.
That introduces a less traditional value-creation lever: combining brand strategy with artificial intelligence. Neither brand nor AI is new. What is new is treating them as a single commercial system. And done correctly, the combination can be a powerful one.
The Brand Problem
Many PE-backed businesses, particularly platforms built through roll-ups and add-on acquisitions, have a brand architecture that reflects their deal history rather than a deliberate market strategy.
Each acquired company may have its own name, sales team, customer relationships, marketing materials and way of going to market. Financially, the businesses may have been consolidated years ago. Commercially, they can still operate as a loosely affiliated collection of companies. That can leave a lot of value on the table.
A common brand framework reinforced by AI can begin creating commercial integration even before the businesses are fully integrated operationally.
Competitors also have a habit of catching up on products and services. When that happens, differentiation increasingly comes from how a company positions itself, how it sells, how it delivers service and how clearly customers understand why they should buy from it. That requires real brand work, not simply a new logo or website. Without it, sales teams continue using legacy messages and sales materials, operating companies approach the market differently and customers may have little idea what the broader platform can actually do for them.
The AI Problem
AI adoption inside portfolio companies is already happening, but unevenly. Individual employees and teams are using ChatGPT, Copilot and other large language models for prospecting, research, proposals, presentations and other sales and marketing work. Often there is no shared brand voice, limited governance and no consistent way to determine whether any of it is actually improving commercial performance.
For a single company, that is a missed opportunity. For a multi-company platform, it can be a larger problem. Every operating company — and potentially every salesperson — can begin creating its own version of the brand, at machine speed.
Treated separately, brand can become an expensive exercise that never gets much further than the website and presentation deck. AI can become a collection of individual productivity experiments. Put them together and the equation changes. Brand gives AI a point of view — who the company is, how it is differentiated, which customers it wants to reach, what problems it solves and how those advantages should be communicated.
In other words, a sponsor can own a platform financially without really owning a platform commercially. Brand and AI can help close that gap.
AI gives the brand scale. It can take that positioning and put it into the daily work of the sales organization — prospecting, account research, competitive intelligence, proposals, sales coaching, RFPs and other customer interactions. The real value comes from connecting the two in a way that changes how the company sells every day — and, for a buy-and-build platform, how it sells across the entire organization.
That is especially important when the platform is still a loosely affiliated collection of add-ons. A common brand framework reinforced by AI can begin creating commercial integration even before the businesses are fully integrated operationally. One operating company can identify opportunities to sell another unit’s products or services. Salespeople can see more of what the entire platform offers. Customer intelligence can be shared. And employees across the organization can work from the same positioning and sales tools.
In other words, a sponsor can own a platform financially without really owning a platform commercially. Brand and AI can help close that gap.
Putting the Two Together
mgREV, developed jointly by MonogramGroup and Parallax Partners, is designed around that idea. mgREV is a governed layer that sits above whatever AI platform a portfolio company is already using and can work alongside its existing CRM and ERP systems. The process starts with the brand rather than the technology.
Positioning, messaging, visual assets, sales materials and documented brand guidelines are established first. That playbook then becomes the operating framework for AI-based sales tools that can include persona-based prospecting, ICP intelligence packages with tailored briefs and outreach, competitive battlecards, an AI sales coach and RFP workflow automation.
The objective is pretty simple: give salespeople the advantages of AI without allowing every salesperson, operating company or acquired business to invent its own version of the company’s message.
A buyer is likely to value a platform with proven cross-selling, a common go-to-market strategy and a repeatable commercial engine more highly than five or ten companies that simply share the same private equity owner.
For a multi-company platform, the governance structure may be even more important. mgREV can apply common brand content, policies and controls across the platform while allowing individual businesses to retain their own products, services, pricing and even separate identities when that makes sense. And when another add-on is acquired, the new company can be brought into the system through configuration rather than starting again from scratch. That has implications beyond simply making the sales organization more efficient.
Sponsors have always understood the financial side of add-on integration: buy a smaller business at a lower multiple, combine its EBITDA with the platform and potentially have that EBITDA revalued at the platform multiple. But there can be a second step. If those acquired companies begin selling together, sharing customers, cross-selling products and operating from a common commercial playbook, the sponsor has created something different from the collection of businesses it originally bought. It has created an integrated growth platform. That can increase EBITDA. But it can also matter to the multiple placed on that EBITDA at exit.
A buyer is likely to look differently at a platform with demonstrated cross-selling, a common go-to-market strategy and a repeatable commercial engine than at five or ten companies that happen to share the same private equity owner. The first is an integrated business with additional avenues for growth. The second can still look like a collection of EBITDA assembled through acquisition.
That distinction can support a stronger exit multiple. And this is where combining brand and AI becomes particularly interesting as a PE value-creation tool. It is not a replacement for cutting costs, raising prices, investing in operations, launching products or buying add-ons. Those traditional levers are not going anywhere. It is another lever.
Done correctly, brand and AI can help a portfolio company sell more effectively, find revenue opportunities across businesses that already sit under the same ownership, integrate future acquisitions faster and turn a loosely affiliated group of companies into a platform that actually behaves like one. That means value can be created from businesses, customers and capabilities the sponsor already owns rather than waiting for the next acquisition, plant investment or price increase.
mgREV gives management teams a way to put that idea into practice. It also gives sponsors a more defensible answer to AI governance questions and, eventually, gives the next buyer something important: evidence that the growth came from a commercial system that can continue after the transaction closes.
Longer holding periods are forcing private equity firms to look harder for additional sources of value creation. Combining brand discipline with AI is a relatively new addition to that playbook. But if it can turn a collection of acquired businesses into an integrated platform that sells more, cross-sells better and deserves a higher multiple at exit, it can be a powerful one.
About the Author
Scott Markman is the Founder and President of the Monogram Group, a Chicago-based specialized brand consulting and creative agency. He has worked in private equity since 1996, when he created the Antares Capital brand from Day One. Since then, he has worked with more than 225 private equity firms and their portfolio companies, spanning industrial & distribution, professional services, healthcare, and technology, as well as with credit providers, family offices, and industry consultants. Monogram is a portfolio company of Olive Tree GP.