The Federal Reserve hit the lights, and the era of free money ended. Interest rates, once an afterthought, are now a primary obstacle, and the cost of debt service is eating into the returns that were once considered guaranteed.

The post-ZIRP era not only changed interest rates, it exposed which GPs built real value creation infrastructure and which relied on multiple expansions. Here's what sophisticated LP due diligence now evaluates, and what it reveals about operational discipline.

Private equity's favorite growth strategy has a dirty secret: most firms can't execute it. Buy-and-build promises elegant multiple arbitrage—acquire a platform at 8x earnings, bolt on competitors at 5x, sell the consolidated entity at 10-12x. The spreadsheet math is flawless. The operational execution is not.