Role of a Private Equity Operating Partner - with Paul Stansik, Partner ParkerGale Capital

**Ray Rike** (0:00)
Hello, I'm Ray Wright, Founder and CEO of BenchMarket, and your host of the Metrics at Measure Up podcast. We talked to a wide variety of the top B2B SaaS and Cloud thought leaders, CEOs, executives, investors and people just like you to discuss the metrics and benchmarks they use to make metrics informed and benchmark validated decisions. Now on to today's show.
Welcome to today's episode of the Metrics That Measure Up podcast. Today, we are joined by Paul Stansik, partner at ParkerGale Capital. We'll be covering four main topic areas with Paul today. First, the role of an operating partner at a private equity firm. Second, the evolution of the operating partner role over the past few years. How you, as a private equity portfolio company, can best work with the operating partners.
And then we're going to talk about some of the metrics trends that Paul's seen evolving over the last six to 12 months. And then last, a bonus feature as a early stage SaaS company. What should you expect from your VP of sales? Paul, with that introduction, can you take a moment to introduce yourself to our listening audience?

**Paul Stansik** (1:27)
Yeah, Ray. And first of all, thanks for having me. I'm a big fan of not only some of the stuff that you put out there, but your point of view and Dave's point of view as well, your partner in crime. So I'm Paul Stansik, I'm a general partner and part of the operations team here at ParkerGale Capital. And we are a small B2B focused PE fund.
We're headquartered here in the West Loop of Chicago, and we buy software businesses from founders.
So each member of our operations team, we kind of have a specialty or a major, mine is growth. And so everything related to sales, marketing and strategy inside our portfolio, I'm the one who teams up with our CEOs, CROs, CMOs, mostly to figure out the strategy and plan to go find our next 100 customers for each of our companies.

**Ray Rike** (2:13)
Well, that provided the perfect opening because you work with a lot of different early stage and mid-stage SaaS companies, but the role of an operating partner, you mentioned that you get very involved in a growth side and from a strategic perspective, but can you talk about other aspects and responsibilities as the leader of the operating team at ParkerGale?

**Paul Stansik** (2:37)
Yeah, I sometimes introduce this as the weirdest job that I've ever loved because every day really is different. You have to flex a lot of different muscles, wear a lot of hats, and there's a lot of variety in the role, which I really enjoy, but I think what makes it so unique is that it's really four jobs in one.
And so one of my most popular articles from the past year is literally called, what does an operating partner do? And it touches on the range in the role. And also if you're an investor or someone who just finds it interesting to think about, hey, if we're going to bring in someone to help tighten up our operations, what should I be looking for? I think it's a good framework for that. So what are those four jobs? The first job is what I call the keeper of the standard.
So generally as an operating partner, you have a specialty or a major and that typically maps to a functional area inside the company where you have a strong point of view on what I call what good looks like, right? So you can call these best practices, you can call these frameworks, but the point is like you should have a strong sense or a strong sense of taste to be able to dive in, spend some time with the company and the people that work there and figure out, hey, what's going well? And where might the gaps be?
And then you need to be able to write down, what does that standard look like? What best practices do you think are most important for companies of your size and stage? And how do you diagnose and teach those standards to people who may have never tried them before? So that idea of establishing the standard, how to find the standard, and then using it to diagnose and teach, if you're going to point to one job that's most important in this role, that might be the one. The second job is what I call being a strategic diplomat.
So nothing gets done in my role unless there is an agreement in place.
At the highest level, I really have no formal authority. I don't work for these companies. I work with them to make things happen and to make operational improvements a reality. But the point is, if we see an opportunity inside the company, nothing is going to happen unless we get the management team to a place where they agree that that opportunity is worth pursuing and we have alignment on what the plan is for how we're going to pursue it. So you need to be this special blend of diplomat where you can not only spot problems, but get people all on the same page with how you're going to solve them. And that's an interesting blend of analytics and influence and just meeting people where they're at. That's probably the hardest part about this role, but when you get it right and you allow people to weigh in before they buy in, there's really nothing more rewarding. The third piece, which Ray probably maps closest to the stuff that you talk about on this podcast, is you just need to be there to help keep score. So we are typically buying businesses from founders who started a company because they were scratching their own itch. They built a product that met a need that they viscerally felt was missing out there, but they haven't necessarily gotten things to the point where they're measuring their results or leading indicators.