The term “private equity” can be a bit confusing. At the most general level it simply refers to private market investing, investing in privately held companies not traded on public stock exchanges (aka the stocks you likely have in your brokerage account). Private companies are generally not available on brokerages such as Fidelity, Charles Schwab, or Robinhood, and must be accessed by either directly investing in them or investing with a private equity fund who performs diligence to identify and invest in the most promising private companies.
More colloquially in the investing world, “private equity” often refers to a particular type of private market investing, “buyouts”. This is when a private equity fund buys the entirety or most of a large, late-stage company employing leverage and operational expertise to drive returns. This can sometimes involve taking a publicly listed company private by purchasing its outstanding shares. Buyout, however, is only one form of private equity. We detail the three broad categories of private market investing below: venture capital, growth equity, and buyout private equity.
1. Venture capital
Venture capital is basically a household term by now thanks to its long history of bets on Silicon Valley. There are many successful VC funds today but some of the oldest and most well-known include Andreessen Horowitz, Kleiner Perkins, and Sequoia to name a few. VC companies typically invest in very early-stage businesses, sometimes pre-revenue, and most famously in tech. VCs may bet on a management team or conviction in a product/technology, providing companies with the financial runway they need to bring a go to market.
As you can imagine, VC investments can have a relatively high failure rate due to the early stage of the investments. To compensate for this, VC firms will often place small bets (such as between $100k and $2m) across potentially hundreds of companies hoping a handful will breakout and generate massive returns. It is sometimes possible to angel invest directly into small companies at this stage as well if one has the network and capital.
2. Growth equity
Growth equity, less known but increasingly popular, typically invests in companies that have matured beyond the check sizes that VCs will often cut but may not be at the scale where a buyout fund is interested. Think of companies that have established products, solid revenue, and high growth, but are looking to accelerate growth and become a truly enterprise organization. Growth equity investments can be lower risk than VC investments and check sizes can vary a lot more, for example from $15m to $500m although there is no defined range. Growth equity investors also place capital across a variety of industries such as consumer, technology, life sciences, and more.
Growth equity can be a fantastic way to gain exposure to fast growing and market tested businesses. While growth equity may be lesser known than its VC and buyout brothers, it has a long history dating back to the ‘80s with firms including General Atlantic, Insight Partners, and TA Associates. The success of growth equity at delivering returns has enticed many traditional buyout shops to introduce growth equity offerings of their own such as Blackstone Growth and TPG Growth.
3. Buyout private equity
Buyout funds are what most people think of when “private equity” is mentioned. After all, these are the companies that made private equity famous. Think KKR, Apollo, Carlyle, etc to name a few. Buyout private equity firms typically may purchase all of or most of a company and can greatly influence the strategic direction of the business. Leverage can be employed at this stage to boost returns for investors. Sometimes these companies may even take a company private that is currently listed on a public stock exchange by purchasing all of its outstanding shares.
Buyout funds can be mammoth, with potentially hundreds of billions of dollars in AUM to assist with takeovers. While buyout shops may be industry agnostic, they will often do deals in traditional industries such as manufacturing. These types of companies may be growing more slowly than the companies that a VC or growth equity fund invests in, the investments are safer and buyout funds typically employ leverage, operational expertise, or a combination of the two to boost returns.
There are many potential benefits from holding any one of these three private equity categories,1 however, a private markets portfolio that covers the full investment life cycle of a typical private company would consist of venture, growth, and buyout.
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1 Source: OneFund, 5 Benefits of Private Equity Investing, July 1, 2022.