What Private Equity Taught Me About Product Management

When Pipedrive acquired Mailigen in 2019, I went from being a founder who did everything to a VP of Product inside a company backed by Vista Equity Partners. Vista is one of the most operationally rigorous PE firms in the world.

It was the most uncomfortable, transformative learning experience of my career.

The founder mindset vs. the PE mindset

As a founder, my default mode was: see opportunity, chase opportunity, figure it out along the way. Speed mattered more than precision. Gut feel was a valid decision-making tool. Revenue growth forgave a lot of sins.

PE operates differently. Every decision is measured. Every initiative has a business case. “I feel like this is the right move” gets you a polite smile and a request for data.

At first, I resisted this. It felt slow, bureaucratic, like it would kill the startup energy I valued. I was wrong about that.

What actually changed my thinking

1. The discipline of saying no

As a founder, I said yes to everything that seemed promising. New feature? Let’s try it. New market? Let’s explore. New partnership? Sure, why not.

Vista taught me that every yes is a no to something else. And they forced you to articulate what that something else was. You couldn’t add to the roadmap without removing something of equal or greater effort.

This sounds obvious. But most product leaders I meet still don’t practice it. They add initiatives without subtracting. Their teams are spread across 30 things instead of crushing 5.

The result of discipline isn’t less output. It’s dramatically better output.

2. Metrics that matter vs. metrics that comfort

Before PE, I tracked metrics that made me feel good. Users, signups, feature launches. Activity metrics that showed movement without proving impact.

Vista introduced me to metrics that actually drive business value. Net revenue retention. Payback period. Expansion revenue per account. These are harder to move — which is exactly why they matter.

I now split metrics into two categories: metrics I’d show an investor (the real ones) and metrics I’d show at a company all-hands (the motivational ones). You need both, but confusing them is dangerous.

3. Operational cadence

Vista-backed companies run on cadence. Monthly business reviews. Quarterly planning. Annual strategic planning. Not because meetings are fun — because without cadence, organizations drift.

I used to think this was corporate overhead. Now I think it’s one of the most under-appreciated tools in scaling. A company with a consistent operational rhythm can absorb changes, adapt strategy, and course-correct without chaos.

The best-run 40-person company I’ve ever seen operated with the same cadence discipline as a 400-person company. It felt effortless because the system was doing the work.

4. The craft of prioritization

Vista uses frameworks like Value Creation Plans — structured approaches to identifying the highest-leverage improvements and executing them systematically.

I used to prioritize by excitement. What’s the most interesting thing we could build? What do customers seem to want? What would be cool?

PE taught me to prioritize by leverage. What is the smallest thing we can build that creates the most business value? What is the bottleneck constraining growth? What would we regret not doing in 12 months?

Different questions. Radically different roadmaps.

5. Accountability without micromanagement

This is the subtlest lesson. PE doesn’t tell you how to do your job. They set clear expectations, provide resources, and then hold you accountable to outcomes.

This is what good management looks like at every level: clear expectations, support, accountability. No hovering. No second-guessing. But absolute clarity on what success looks like and when it’s expected.

I adopted this with my own teams and the difference was immediate. People performed better when they had clear targets and room to figure out the how.

What I’d tell founders facing their first board

Data isn’t your enemy. You can still be creative, intuitive, and bold. But back it up. The combination of founder instinct and data discipline is more powerful than either alone.
Frameworks aren’t bureaucracy. A good framework saves you from reinventing your decision-making process every time. Adopt ones that work, discard ones that don’t.
Embrace the discomfort. If you’re not uncomfortable, you’re not learning. The PE environment pushed me harder than I’d ever pushed myself. I’m permanently better for it.
Guard your product instinct. Data and process can over-correct toward incrementalism. Your job as a product leader is to balance disciplined execution with bold bets. Don’t let the PE lens eliminate the founder lens.

The synthesis

The best product leaders I know combine founder intuition with operational discipline. They can see around corners and build systems that execute reliably.

PE didn’t kill my founder spirit. It gave it structure. And structure, it turns out, is what lets you do bigger things.

I write about the intersection of leadership, product, and team performance at The Operating Leader.