Hello, and welcome to the First Close podcast, powered by Langham Hall.
My guest today has spent almost 25 years investing across private
markets and recently completed one of the fastest first-time
fundraisers ever seen in Europe.
Mark began his career in investment banking at Close Brothers before
holding key investment roles at Bank of America, Sovereign Capital,
and most recently, Inflexion.
At Inflexion, he was responsible for the sourcing, execution, and management
of private equity investments between twenty-five to a hundred million
across business services, data and information, and education sectors.
Most notably, Mark led Inflexion Partnership Capital's most successful
ever deal, reported to have generated an almost 6x return in just 18 months.
In 2025, he co-founded Goldenpeak with ex Houlihan Lokey banker Leon Gillespie.
Goldenpeak is a lower mid-market buyout firm focused on investing £25-75m million
in high growth B2B services and has just closed its debut fund at £375m,
hitting the hard cap in just 12 weeks.
Mark Williams, welcome.
Thanks, Tom.
Pleasure to be with you again.
Lovely to have you.
Mark, look, before we talk about Goldenpeak, I'd love
to go back to the start.
How did your career begin in private equity?
That feels like a long time ago, but effectively, I started out with
Close Brothers Corporate Finance back in 2001, learning the ropes.
A- and there I had a good experience with all the training in the sort of basics.
But really as the dot-com, if you remember that, the dot-com bubble burst.
I do.
And, I had to look for, finding a, position in a different role, and that's
where I got to, BofA Capital Partners, which was a European mid-market investor.
And I was very fortunate because that experience of valuations,
working with businesses, got me a great role in the business.
but really w- we were working with a firm that didn't have a presence in Europe.
and actually investing without a name, without the sort of track record
meant that we had to find deals, scrap for them, do stuff from scratch.
No one knew who we were, which was great learning because you go into a
room with no expectation, no right to win, and that's, again, and we'll come
onto how we think about Goldenpeak.
You've really got to earn your spurs, and, BofA taught me that on a European stage.
I worked with some great people who've gone on to many other successful
firms, and I learned a lot, frankly.
I guess, learning your career in the dot-com bubble and then through 2008, it
must have been, a steep learning curve.
Yeah, I think there was lots of, things to come, and obviously the GFC was soon
to loom, i- in the market, and it meant you really had to go back to basics.
What's a good business?
How's it gonna perform?
I know people talk about cash flow, but it's probably 20 years ago, the industry
was maturing from the very early Close Brothers private equity firm would've
been small business to what it is today, and those businesses were growing.
CVC, Cinven were also quite small.
They were doing, 100 million pound checks compared to what we, know about today.
The industry was maturing, and we learned really how to find good
opportunities and invest in them.
But actually, it caused me to pause, it's probably in the mid-2000s,
to, to how do you work with a firm that's got, has got a right to do,
to win, to really generate returns?
And, that's what drew me to Sovereign Capital.
They were probably the leading buy and build specialist in the
UK, and still are one of them.
And actually, what they were doing was saying, "How can I invest and
create a return rather than financial engineering or, hoping that you
get lucky with an exit?" They were actually building value in the things
they did and taught me really how to identify a company, work with a
team to create value in that company, grow that company internationally,
to a serially much bigger scale.
These are themes we'll talk about with Goldenpeak.
But taught me how to do that, and I had a great five or six years there,
learning the ropes, getting promoted, a- and learning how to invest my own money.
We had to put substantial sums of our Own, own, frankly, all my bonus, every money,
every penny I got at Sovereign went back into investments, which makes you think
more curiously, it is worrisome, but it, makes you think, this is my money.
How am I, how is it gonna make a return?" Not just, it was
from some magic sort of area.
It was incredible.
So we learned a lot and, really this moving to, Inflexion was a,
was generated off how do you combine those experiences into moving at a
probably higher pace across, a, sort of more, I guess a wider, remit.
So yeah, that drove a, an opportunity to move to a sort of rapidly growing
firm at the time in probably 2011.
It's crazy really to think some of those names that you mentioned there, the,
kind of what are now household names within private equity are now, from where
they were to, to where they are now.
It, must have changed so much for you in the last 20, 25 years, the
kind of the private equity landscape.
Yeah.
the, sort of the concept of even value creation in 2011 didn't exist.
There was, there weren't value acc- acceleration, value creation teams.
There was, limited numbers of integrated pan-European opportunities.
There were a few multi-fund funds.
the Inflexions, the Bridge Points, have now expanded to, to much larger scale
and the sort of the Cinvens, CVCs have got even bigger above that, Apex, Advent.
So it, it's changed a lot, but I don't think what, hasn't changed is the
fact that you get dynamic companies what from £3 to 15 million EBITDA who
want to get much bigger, and we will obviously talk about Goldenpeak, but
that range in 25 years hasn't changed.
There are lots of them.
They're great founder entrepreneurs.
They want to accelerate.
They want a firm who can talk their language, but also just work with
them- not against them, not with lots of leverage, not with frankly,
a I know more than you approach.
we definitely do not know any more than the founders we back.
In fact, we know a lot less than them, but we do know about how
to help them, and that, that was what I saw at all Bank of America,
Sovereign, and particularly Inflexion.
And, you know, I think Inflexion were one of the strongest at it.
they're a great investor, but they actually do support teams.
They have a culture of helping businesses grow and a sort of a curiousness about
how do we support you more, rather than some of the, thing I quite find
quite funny in private equity is that some people, they walk up to a rock.
They spend millions on due diligence, in the rock.
They conclude it's a rock and walk over it.
Certainly my experience with the better investors is not that,
and, if you spend too long doing that you can't grow a business.
was lucky to spend 14 years at Inflexion in their different services teams,
investing in some great companies, but frankly, backing some great individuals.
it's quite interesting why you, private equity sometimes has this
reputation of, in the press or, the kind of in the general public of
being a vulture or, whatever it is.
So everything you've talked about there on supporting founders
and particularly the way private equity's going is quite interesting.
It's maybe a different way to think about private equity to perhaps what The man on
the street would think of what we do here.
Yeah, and, it's definitely that, but it's what, we've seen, it, this applies
to all of Goldenpeak as well, and myself in particular, we've seen that
behavior generates better returns.
So we've flipped it on its head.
It's not, "I'm cleverer than you, I'm gonna tell you what to do," and
that will somehow generate returns.
And then that has worked in many, past, past investment cycles.
Here, it's how do we combine our skills to help you grow faster as a, team?
what do you need in that team?
And that sort of lack of, ego on both sides drives, frankly, better
results because people are bright.
The people we work with are b- are good people.
They just wanna know, I've seen that work before.
That hasn't worked." And once you've got above the nought to three of
EBITDA, the, real hardest yards are founders founding businesses.
That's incredible stuff.
Once they've got to the size we can help them, then we can really put the
afterburners on, and they… I just have the utmost respect for anyone who
can set up a business with no profit, no income, no revenue, and actually get
it to the size when we can help them.
that is the hardest part, and we're frankly very lucky to be
able to get on the journey once that hard work's been started.
Yeah.
do you think that helps you get deals done?
Do founders respond to that story better than perhaps they
would from a, different investor?
we founded the business.
There are lots of private equity firms founded by the original founders.
Not many left these days, but there are, and I think those firms
still tend to do slightly better.
We're in that stage where we are, Leo and I, the two founders, and
we can speak that exact language.
I still think, or with people who found real businesses,
we're, lucky to help them.
but what I would say is the difference is, as a cohesive unit of people, we
can respond to your problems, the issues you have, and give you a, an answer.
It's not yes, no.
It's a, we could do this.
We could do that." And I'm seeing that increasingly as private equity
gets bigger, investment committees are very dislocated from their teams.
That's not a criticism.
It's just a function of being a multi-asset manager, and therefore,
when you're dealing with, an individual, they've likely got to report back to base.
That's, good corporate behavior, but ultimately, it slows down decision-making.
And at the £3-15m EBITDA range, the SME, there isn't much time to
wait for a two-week turnaround.
And, even worse than that, there's, an issue of you agree something at
a board, and then a few weeks later you get a sort of a, I know we said
this, but we've gotta do that."
And it's, it drive these return… These firms drive good returns.
It's not a critical, it's not a negative, but it, makes it harder.
And particularly the lower mid-market is where we think the opportunity is, to be
dynamic, to give, what was agreed at one point and deliver it a few days later.
And, we'll talk about our first deal, but we did that in three and a half weeks.
Wow.
with a, bolt on at the same time.
So y- it's proved its worth already, and we're hoping to have
a few more to talk about soon.
Yeah, I, do think, for the work we're doing with similar firms at the moment,
the kind of the next wave of spin-outs that I think we're in at the moment,
that agility, that nimbleness that new platforms can, demonstrate versus, perhaps
some of the mid-market and the upper mid-market firms, the ones that used to
be doing the deals at the sort of sizes you're doing, who have grown and grown.
It does feel a bit like, yeah, that agility and that speed of execution is
what is pushing businesses like yours, I think, to raise a lot of money quickly.
Investors wanna underwrite it more.
Stats all show that they outperform.
So yeah, our, sort of house view on this is that, those sort of funds I, II, and
III, I think is where a lot of capital is.
There's almost barbell happening in private markets at the moment.
You've got the very big, very beautiful, household names in private
equity, and then you've got, sector specialists, spin-outs, hungry, agile
teams like yours, and then it's the stranded middle ground is I think where
perhaps there's less capital going at the moment.
Yeah, and I think there's some wonderful people and individuals
across all these firms, so I think there's plenty of talent out there.
But I think the thing that we focus on is, actually, knowing
what you're good at, raising a fund appropriate for that market.
And, what we see a lot of the time is, dislocated strategies where
either the people or the fund are not fit for the market they're in.
And that's not 'cause they're bad, it's because it's been encouraged to
ra- either the fund or the founders have been encouraged to raise lots more
money than they need, and then they have to backtrack a few years later when
they realize they're not in the market that they have the experience for.
And so some of the ones that have scaled are really impressive 'cause
they've gone through that growth pain and made it almost they made it
through takeoff velocity and have left that showing a repeatable model, and
that would include the Inflexions and the bridge points and, many others.
whereas I think others have, will try and replicate that
but don't have that experience.
And so Goldenpeak is not set up to, triple its fund size in the next three weeks.
It's not set to do something different in the next few weeks.
It's set up to address founders' issues in that £25-75m equity market,
and that way we can repeat that.
And our investors have been wonderful supporters of that.
But whilst we talk about funds one, two, and three, and frankly we've only
got one, we're not trying to change the world, but we would wanna see that success
repeat in that similar phase because then we can go on and I, believe that,
that focus, that sort of guiding light will keep us honest when you're
trying to scale f- from, £375m to 3 billion, which we are absolutely not.
But that is impressive and very hard to do and requires a lot
of non-deal doing experience.
and the firms that do it are brilliant, but actually we're here to find good
businesses, work with teams, and that is really the be all end all
for the firm, certainly for now.
Yeah.
It's, almost that shift from investment management to asset management, right?
Kind of once you become a AUM aggregator, I think, this, everybody, the stats all
show and you hear a lot of people talk about it, that's when the business starts
to change, from, the kind of core focus of investing to just that, that AUM play.
Yeah.
And, again, if you've got the mettle for it and you can do it like some
of these firms have done, great.
But actually we see great opportunities that are still here for that firm.
And o- once you build a firm to stay focused as either an AUM
builder or a investment builder, then you can do what you wanna do.
Whereas I think if you build it as an investment builder and suddenly
try and flip after six years, it becomes very difficult and you have
to change the team who are doing it.
And we could talk at length about this, but ultimately, Goldenpeak is
built from Leon and, my experience of what works really well, what drives
bigger returns, money multiple.
and so we try to work with all of those features, almost ignoring
anything else that isn't about supporting good businesses.
Let's switch gears a second.
So we talked a little bit there about Goldenpeak.
I'd be interested to know more about what drove you to set up
Goldenpeak, why now, and what made you want to join forces with Leon?
Yeah, it was natural continuation actually.
we, Leon and myself, wanted to do it differently.
We wanted to take some of the best learnings from some of the best
firms in the industry, and combine them into a fluid opportunity of
finding businesses, executing and, supporting in one ambitious place.
Leon was the obvious and only choice.
as we talked before, a lot of these firms are marriages c- of convenience,
firms that have arisen on a fundraising basis because people need to do them.
Neither Leon and I needed to do this.
We wanted to do it.
and we've seen that experience of strong origination, finding companies, providing
choice, strong execution capabilities, but also strong investment skills.
The combination's really powerful.
I think private equity, certainly if you ask Leon, has become lazy.
Expects deals to come into London or a major city because you have the money.
You have no right, as we talked about with Bank of America,
you had no right to win a deal.
And we believe no matter how successful or, strong fundraising
is, we have no right to win a deal.
We're, as good as the next investor, and we'll hope to win in with
our own, our merits in any place.
So it was an obvious partnership to, to have that drive, to both
resign, to both take the leap.
We had good jobs.
We had no need to do it.
And again, I think that's the drive that, that allows you to say, if
you're gonna take that leap, what, should you create?" And we were able
to, look at the space, but perhaps we could always argue this is a bit lazy.
We'd always worked in this space.
We'd always worked in the low, mid-market.
So for us it wasn't, it wasn't, "Oh, I happen to know the space, I'm only
gonna do it." It was the perfect mix of the space is a really good
opportunity, but also we've both done a lot of it, so it was an easy
sort of partnership to, to build on.
It's, like you said, it's a crowded space.
You have no right to do deals.
What why is Goldenpeak different?
It's a, I, don't wanna ask a nebulous question, but, yeah, what kind of
differentiates you from the next investor?
Yeah.
And, I th- I think the perception that private equity is crowded is,
tricky because it is, but if you relatively look at the £25 to 75 market
versus the £150m plus, and I've sold multiple businesses in that latter
market, that is definitely crowded.
There are five bidders, fully done bidders, diligence, SPA, all that
done at that upper, at that, size market, call this £500m equity market.
At, the level that we operate, yes, there's always a couple of bidders, but
it's rare to have t- five, let alone 10.
So there's, definitely less crowding, but, there is always an excellent bidder
in most processes for a good company.
But what we then find is you have companies, private firms that
are excellent, but their ultimate mandate is to get stuff cheap,
and they do good things with them.
we won't mention any names, but their mandate to LPs is buy
cheap, invest well, sell high.
Brilliant strategy, cannot fault it.
It's always worked for probably the longest time in
history, forget private equity.
But it limits you, because when you see something that's good and
you really wanna get it, you can't, 'cause you've got to buy for six
times, or you've got to show that it's seven and a half, not eight times.
And so we set the business up to Found those teams who want to grow, do things
at speed, and then work with them to be agile, both on the investment process,
so we talked about doing a deal in three and a half weeks with a bolt on.
no other firm we think could do that or very few could, and we could talk
the language of the founder saying, "We'll, get on this and deliver it."
And so we set our funds up to do that.
we set the fund up to, to, have a team like that, so a team of dynamic
individuals who can operate, in difficult, high-speed environments, but
actually good people who get the best out of each other and work together
and, I think that's also has changed.
There's that sort of joke that a lot of private equity firms are
five people who used to like each other and they don't anymore.
And then, and hopefully we all like each other.
Hopefully the team like each other and that won't change, but that gives you
a certain feel and, we would say to anyone who meets people from Goldenpeak,
have a look at how the individuals you meet interact with each other.
Do they shake each other's hands?
Do they look like they don't wanna be in the same room with them?
Because that's really important when you're working with a management team
who you've gotta work closely with.
If you can't get on with your colleagues, or at least it's a, at best
manageable dislike, that, that's not a way to d- do a deal quickly to then
help a management team grow quickly 'cause there's a lot of politicking.
And so ultimately we wanted to give a clean focus for that, that
mid-market and then allow us to work with companies quickly and, so far
we, we feel comfortable that there's definitely a, market for that business.
It's managing family dynamics or a bad episode of "Succession." yeah, exactly.
And, I, th- there's lots of things that go around with working
together in all industries.
I don't think it's unique to private equity, but, the focus on,
generating returns, money multiple is what we set the fund up to do.
If we generate a good money multiple, the management teams and the founders we back
are gonna make many times more than that.
That's it.
We can divide the pie up, so who has more or less of it, but if
you don't create a much bigger pie, there's nothing to divide.
And I think a lot of people have got, into navel-gazing on, I want more than you.
But actually the goal is to make it as big as possible and then your
share of that will be in terms of your return personally, not just
financial wealth, but the wealth of actually creating great companies and,
we want to see the th- the invest- business that we invest in go on.
So the stuff I've worked with over the years has gone on with multiple
private equity owners to be much bigger, and you can ask those individuals who
acquire businesses that I worked on, you can ask them what they think and
they're like, one said at a very large fund, "That business you put together
is the best business we ever bought."
I didn't put it together.
The management team put it together.
But I want Goldenpeak buyers in the future to think, "Wow, we wanna buy
everything off Goldenpeak," because they really do care about what they've built.
they're gonna get paid for that, but, actually I'm gonna do well out of it
and that, that has sometimes been lost.
It's just- But what's it?
Pile them high, stack them high, pile them out the door.
that's not what we want.
Yeah.
We, wanna build high quality businesses that, that, people who come to us
feel like, great, that's something we're gonna go on with again.
Yeah.
Sp- speed is, you've talked about it a couple of times now.
F- fund one, you hit your hard cap in 12 weeks, first deal done in three weeks.
What, makes that possible?
I know you've touched on a couple of things there, but, even the
fund close, 12 weeks to hard cap is phenomenal by anybody's standards.
what were the factors that got you there?
obviously, it was working with Langham Hall, one of the key- Thank you, Mark.
but, no, it was.
It w- there was an excellent support there, and we picked sort of
high-quality people all the way through.
I, think there's, a sort of phrase, and I'm not unfortunately a military man,
but they call it, hurry up and wait.
And that is you prepare a long time in advance.
You don't know when things are gonna happen, but you
have to be constantly ready.
and, stretching the ana- analogy a bit, but ultimately,
we know this market's right.
We know there's an opportunity, and we prepare diligently, so when
the time is right, you're there.
I think as I talked about before, some of the fundraising market seems to
be stuff stuck together last minute, bit of sticky plaster, bend the
story a bit to fit what sounds good.
and that's a, that's just a bit of life in there.
But really, we would have gone out with this story in a good or bad market.
We believed in it.
We would have waited two years to raise the fund and gone out on the
road every week for as long as it took.
We, didn't care what happened, we were gonna raise this fund.
but we'd also prepared.
We were a good partnership.
We had some excellent teams around us, not just your good
sales, but strong fundraising agent who really understood that.
And I think the key thing was we were able to articulate our story with evidence in
a market that we'd operated in before.
So it wasn't anything new.
It wasn't an adjustment of l- big scale changes that sort of might be true or not.
We were in that market for the last 20 years, both of us,
and we could evidence that.
but I also think we, we have seen from our experience in, the last 20 years,
if you've got a neat story and it is accurately backed up, you're better
off working with a smaller group of people and getting there quickly.
I would argue the same for when a management team is selecting an investor.
You're better off picking three or four good private firms, building a
relationship, and that will get you done rather than what you call spray and play.
Send it to 300 people and see what happens.
Hope for the best, yeah.
Yeah.
And, I was very surprised with the number of fundraising agents when
they would say, "We'll take you on a roadshow here, and we'll send your
book out to 40 people in this country and 50 in that country." A- and how
are you gonna get to know that fund?
Whereas we were lucky to actually deal with probably only three or four times
the number of LPs that we actually got to invest in the fund, and quickly we'll get
that down to probably twice the number we have in the fund, and that halved again.
But, that's not actually, as far as I understand, a, it's not a very usual way.
Not common at all, no.
It's,
obviously we, saw you guys through the fundraising.
It was a, yeah, very focused list.
short, sharp fundraising period, very concentrated list and target
list of LPs and probably got, you to where you are Those, those investor
conversations, we we talked a little bit about it while you were fundraising.
What, were the challenges?
W-were there in- the investors that didn't invest, was it a timing issue?
were they… W-what were the kind of challenges, if you like?
Or what were the things that people were saying?
I don't wanna say saying no, but, what were the challenges along the way from
yeah, launching to then first close?
I think there's the intensity.
everyone said that fundraising is very hard.
I d-didn't appreciate even despite it being short, which
is brilliant, it was, hard.
and one of the advisors I know quite well in the corporate finance market,
you'll know who this is, says, "I've got some good news and bad news.
The good news is it's gonna be short, the bad news is it's gonna be painful."
And that's exactly what it was.
That drives a challenge because you've got to do seven Zoom calls a day.
you've got to fly around the world, meet people, and you've got
to build a relationship quickly.
And that was hard because, face-to-face is better, but that's a lot of ground to
cover, so Zoom's very useful these days.
I'd say the volume of meetings combined with how quickly you've got to deliver
a short, snappy story was hard.
but it got easier as the sets quickly filtered into, "We understand you two,
we like you, we believe you, and we want to learn more about your story." and,
so it's almost a within the first hour you pretty much know, and most investors
that progress past that, we had a feel that it wasn't right, but we obviously
were working hard to, get both going.
So we were lucky that we did progress with probably two and a
half times the demand we, needed.
And so the hard part then became actually we liked all the people that got that
far to, as far as they wanting to invest.
And so we had to lose some which, which came about naturally through
the timetable being accelerated.
we had to pare back.
So I think the challenge was you never know what you're gonna get.
You're trying to get as much demand as possible, and if it
goes well, you get too much.
But I, really want to stress that no matter what happened,
we kept the fund size the same.
I've seen a lot of strategies, both fundraising, but certainly as we
know in the existing market, go out for a certain number, let's say 2
billion, I don't know who this fund is, but, and then they, take four.
But that's a strategy shift, yet it seems to be okay.
And I'm not saying funds can't do that, but that level of scale
means what you've put in the PPM is different to the market you're, in.
A very different proposition, right?
Yeah.
so it's curious, and obviously it works 'cause people, the
fees are bigger and that works.
But actually, that shift drives a whole, I need to hire twice the team now, and
you've got to build a different business.
So for us, it was really important that we stuck to our knitting and,
we were very clear with investors, no matter how well this fundraise
goes, we're not raising more than 375.
And we did that.
So actually, I think that, that, conviction that we'd stay there was,
well received and, I'm delighted to have such a wonderful set of, investors.
I, must admit, when I, when we saw the investor demand, I was surprised
that you didn't raise the hard cap.
But like you say, I think staying disciplined, whether it's the
number, bigger fund means you've gotta do more deals or bigger deals
and suddenly you're drifting away.
It's that almost mission creep, from what you said you're gonna
set out to do at the start.
Yeah, no, and we really believe in that.
And, so it, it's that function we discussed earlier of we're
not trying to create a 4 billion business within the next three years.
doesn't mean we haven't ideas about growth and, bits and pieces, but
actually we know this market, we know it works, and we wanna do that.
I certainly don't beget anyone who can, raise a lot more than they
set out to do, but you've then got to do a lot of mental math.
So we were really pleased with that, and it's given us also
good momentum with our investors.
If we need to do other things, if we need co-invest, if we do, want to look at
something different, which, we don't, but they're, there 'cause they know we'll,
do what we say and we'll say what we do.
Thinking back to the start, we've talked a little bit about what
you've done and where you're going.
What was one thing that you think that you set at the outset, one thing
that you decided that you think will define Goldenpeak in the long term?
If I had to pick one thing from today, what do you think it is that
will define Goldenpeak as a business?
Yeah.
it's sort of part of our DNA, and it's really this sort of, It's on our
website, so you'll be surprised to see.
It's this authentic, ambitious, collaborative.
everyone's got three words, and they usually involve integrity
and something like trust.
But we want our teams to be authentic people.
We want them to be someone you can go, you-- I may or may not be best friends
with you, but I believe what you tell me.
You, do what you say." ambition.
We want people to think, "How can we do this better, and really do something
different?" And that will change, with AI, with all the things that come after AI.
How can you be more ambitious for, the, relationships and teams you work with?
Collaboration.
everything's about working together, both as a team, in the business,
but also with our management teams.
And I, actually saw a quote from, Maya Angelou that I think sums
it up best, and we probably gotta get this put in our reception.
But effectively, "People will forget what you said, people will forget
what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel." And
we will work through our investments in our teams where that's appropriate.
if, we make people feel the wrong way, people remember that, and we may
have made a good or bad investment, but ultimately it's that thing, and
making them feel right and working with them, we find drives better returns.
We'll get it put on a postcard for you.
Yeah.
Yeah, exactly.
What are your non-negotiables?
We've talked a lot about what you do and what you will do and the strategy.
What, won't you do?
What will you walk away from?
What are the real non-negotiables for you?
I think the, one, a very good founder I work with, he'll again know who he is,
talked to me about the speed of trust.
if you can't trust someone, just forget it.
And the deals that I have worked on that have been difficult over the
years have been where we've had stuff like the team are fit for purpose.
You can trust them if they're, if they're economically aligned with you.
There's always a problem when economics don't align.
You've always got things happening in life.
so for me, the 100% non-negotiable is if people can't work and trust
each other, and that goes both ways.
If you can't trust the investor behind you, you can't really grow
a business 'cause you're always looking over your shoulder.
So that's a definite non-negotiable.
we talked about ambition.
if people don't really want to do something.
That doesn't mean working long hours, it means do you really wanna believe…
So do you believe in your business?
do you really see a way to, to grow and do you wanna work with us in
that trusting way to, to do it?
If you can't, it's not a problem for Goldenpeak.
We don't have to work together.
but if you feel that trust and collaboration, then let's go for it.
But if, not, I think you have to walk away.
Yes.
That, must feed in a little bit to your hiring, right?
if you don't, you kinda gotta g- hire the team that wants to do this, so that maybe
a slightly more entrepreneurial team.
It's not a team that's gonna go in and be one of a massive investment team like
you get at some of the, bigger firms.
I, assume you're hiring those that are, that A, you can trust, but B,
that are really motivated and, yeah, looking to build something with you.
I, think there's an important point in there, though.
We- we're not looking, and never will do, look for some sort of discount.
You're taking a risk and so you get paid less, but you've gotta go for it.
We, are hiring the best at the best rates, but the reality is there's
that sort of, "I'm gonna do it.
I'm just gonna quit my job and go for this." The… And we have, ended many
interviews, certainly mentally in the interview when they say, you've
gotta compensate me for this," and, "It's very risky, so I need that."
And it's basically in, in Leon and my mind, the minute that words get
out of the, the interview's over.
It's over, I've given the clues away, unfortunately now, but- … but it's that
drive where people see an opportunity and that means they can relate that to the
entrepreneurs and founders they work with.
So yeah, it does, breed that and we've, we, we're really happy with
the people that have joined us.
They're, wonderful individuals and they've really frankly taken, have
taken a risk, but I h- hope they feel already it's not, really a risk.
That's your secret sauce then.
Anybody looking for a job with Mark Williams needs to, not talk about
their comp in their interview.
Yeah, I know we've given that away, but yeah.
We'll, we'll, s- find out one way or another.
it's your name on the door now.
what is it?
What keeps you up at night?
If… What are you going to bed worrying about?
Yeah, the first thing is it's Goldenpeak on the door.
It's not Mark or Leon.
It's not our initials.
it is about, finding value, and that's not in a discount bargain basement way.
That's about- Finding the right teams who have the opportunity to, do things.
That's the first thing that keeps me awake.
Can we find enough stuff?
We have a restless energy that, that always says, "Is there something
good for, what's the next deal?"
and we're not under pressure because we've got a great fund with great
investors, but we're always trying to find another, opportunity.
I think then it's, it's making sure we can unlock the value.
we've got a value acceleration team.
We have a lot of value acceleration experience, both on a sort of
personal level, we can help you.
We have great contact bases.
on the commercial and pricing model, we work with a, part of our
team who's got specialism in that.
But we've gotta make it happen.
None of this stuff happens for free.
None of it happens if you're actually too aggressive.
But that means our partners, I hope, are looking for us to bring
that value, bring it daily, weekly, at the most appropriate level.
And so it keeps me awake thinking, we've gotta make these, gotta make these
partnerships really work and, excited to do that with our, first, investment.
Very good.
Mark, I'm conscious of time.
I don't wanna keep you from a rainy evening here in London.
But let me just close with this.
If we are back here in five years' time, how will you know that
you've been truly successful?
I think it, it is a combination of both having a great time,
investing well, and driving returns.
we are investing pension fund money, endowments.
These are people's, savings.
We have got to make a return, but we've got to do that in the right way.
And so for me, success will be, having a great team at Goldenpeak,
seeing that team flourish, seeing a number of investments working.
And then, and ultimately in, in today's world, it's always been returning capital.
it's obviously a challenging industry right now.
but also it- it's a fundamental.
if it's your own money, you've got to work out how do you return that, that capital.
And that drives us thinking, is there an innovative way to do this?
Could we sell a minority stake to a trade investor?
Could we, find a large cap PE firm who really wants to expand into the US?
Find those innovative ways to, to exit businesses will, be part of our story.
So I think having that great team and great reputation
will, set us up for success.
I look forward to seeing you back here in five years.
Yeah, I would love to.
Mark, thanks very much.
I've really enjoyed our conversation.
Pleasure.
Thank you.
Thank you, Mark.
First Close is powered by Langham Hall, the award-winning fund services
platform for emerging managers.
For 20 years now, we have been supporting new managers as they
build their businesses from day one, acting as a trusted advisor
through first close and beyond.
For more information, you can find us online at langhamhall.com.