• Vista Equity Partners Standard Operating Procedures
• Vista Equity Partners Chicago
• Equity Administration Software

Vista Equity Partners Promotes New Leadership to the Firm’s Private Equity Endeavor and Foundation Funds

As a parent org, Vista has some excellent operating procedures. And working with them you'll get to learn quite a few of their protocols for being such a successful management corp. That said, because they wanted to save $$$, the management personnel they would hire tended to be less experienced (intelligent but definitely less experienced). Investment Approach – Vista Equity Partners. Companies / Approach. Enhancing Company Value. Our deep industry knowledge and expertise helps foster success across Vista companies. By providing technology expertise, operational guidance and capital for sustainable growth, we empower organizations across all industries to stay ahead in the.

Rachel Arnold Appointed Senior Managing Director and Co-Head of Endeavor Fund; Patrick Severson Appointed Senior Managing Director and Co-Head of Foundation Fund

Vista Equity Partners (“Vista”), a leading global investment firm focused exclusively on enterprise software, data and technology-enabled businesses, today announced the Firm will be making the following leadership appointments to its private equity funds:

• Rachel Arnold will be appointed Senior Managing Director and Co-Head of Vista’s Endeavor Fund alongside current Co-Head René Stewart;
• Patrick Severson will be appointed Senior Managing Director and Co-Head of Vista’s Foundation Fund alongside current Co-Head Marc Teillon.

Rachel Arnold has been a vital member of the Vista ecosystem for over 18 years, working as an operating executive within the portfolio and with both the Foundation and Endeavor Fund teams. Throughout her tenure, Ms. Arnold has participated in the investment process, advised portfolio executives and managed portfolio operations strategies. She has worked with over 20 Vista portfolio companies and currently sits on the boards of Dispatch, Kazoo, RadarFirst, TripleSeat and Zapproved. She was actively involved in the Firm’s investments in AGDATA, Autotask, BigMachines, Bullhorn, Kibo, Lanyon, Lone Wolf, Naviga, PeopleAdmin, Relias Learning, SecureLink and Social Solutions. She will be leading the Endeavor Fund alongside René Stewart.

“Rachel helped launch the Endeavor Fund, and it is a privilege to now partner with her to co-lead one of the world’s largest tech buyout funds led exclusively by women,” said René Stewart, Senior Managing Director and Co-Head of the Vista Endeavor Fund. “Her strong leadership, proven ability to build and inspire teams and strategic operating expertise will be powerful tools as Fund Co-Head.”

Patrick Severson brings more than 21 years of experience investing in the enterprise software space, including almost a decade at Vista and over a decade at Warburg Pincus investing in software companies at all stages. His leadership within two of Vista’s most recent successful exit events, Granicus and Wrike, are among his many contributions as an expert enterprise software investor. Mr. Severson currently sits on the boards of AGDATA, AlertMedia, ARCOS, Four Winds, Granicus, Kibo and Sonatype, and works with the Firm’s investment in Trintech. He will be leading the Foundation Fund alongside Marc Teillon.

“Patrick has taken on progressive leadership responsibilities, making this a very natural evolution for the Foundation Fund,” said Marc Teillon, Senior Managing Director and Co-Head of the Vista Foundation Fund. “He builds comradery among his deal teams and delivers the highest standard of quality and results as seen through the investments he has worked on. I am thrilled to work closely with Patrick in this new capacity.”

With these promotions, Alan Cline, currently Co-Head of Vista’s Endeavor Fund, and Rob Rogers, currently Co-Head of Vista’s Foundation Fund, will become Senior Advisors to their respective funds and to the executive leadership of Vista. They will remain on their respective Investment Committees and continue to work on portfolio company initiatives.

Vista’s Endeavor Fund focuses on mission-critical, high-growth enterprise software, data and technology-enabled businesses with $10 million to $30 million in annual recurring revenue. The Fund’s second vehicle Endeavor Fund II raised over $1 billion in capital commitments in 2019. Vista’s Foundation Fund invests in middle-market enterprise software, data, and technology-enabled companies seeking to scale their businesses and accelerate their growth trajectory. The Fund’s most recent vehicle Foundation Fund IV raised approximately $4.5 billion in 2020.

About Vista Equity Partners

Vista is a leading global investment firm with more than $73 billion in assets under management as of September 30, 2020. The firm exclusively invests in enterprise software, data and technology-enabled organizations across private equity, permanent capital, credit, and public equity strategies, bringing an approach that prioritizes creating enduring market value for the benefit of its global ecosystem of investors, companies, customers and employees. Vista’s investments are anchored by a sizable long-term capital base, experience in structuring technology-oriented transactions and proven, flexible management techniques that drive sustainable growth. Vista believes the transformative power of technology is the key to an even better future – a healthier planet, a smarter economy, a diverse and inclusive community and a broader path to prosperity. Further information is available at vistaequitypartners.com. Follow Vista on LinkedIn, @Vista Equity Partners, and on Twitter, @Vista_Equity.

Vista Equity Partners
Dafna Tapiero
vista@laurelstrategies.com
202-776-7776

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210324005899/en/

When I think about the world’s largest software companies — my mind goes to Microsoft, Oracle, SAP and a few others. One thing that I didn’t appreciate (prior to GrowthGenius) is the fact that the 80/20 rule applies to the tech space as well — where there is a massive long tail of software/cloud companies that are not named Google, Amazon, Netflix and etc. A recent tweet (see below) along with a few other viewpoints (e.g. Mark Mcleod’s SMB software market thesis) has opened my eyes to the application of private equity in the software-as-a-service (SaaS) space.

One particular organization that caught my eye was Vista Equity Partners. Founded by Robert F. Smith and Brian Shethi, Vista focuses purely on enterprise software solutions and has generated a solid 22.4% return over the past ten years — placing itself in the top quartile of private equity funds in the world. As with any private equity fund, they have an explicit focus on free cash flows — going against the grain of how most tech companies work (top-line focus). Vista now specifically targets companies that have historically had a top-line focus with zero / minimal profitability. The following quote was particularly revealing:

Software companies taste like chicken. They’re selling different products, but 80 percent of what they do is pretty much the same. We exclusively focus on enterprise software.” — Robert Smith

As a founder, there is an ideological belief that ‘my product is different’ and requires an equally unique operational process. Having worked on the sales process for 30+ companies in the past few months, I disagree with this belief. I think the effectiveness of a business truly comes down to the ability to create a network effect such that the value of the business increases as more people use it.

So How Does Vista Operate?

Vista is known to follow a very specific procedure based on a highly guarded playbook called Vista’s Standard Operating Procedures (VSOP).

1) Standardized Employee Assessments

Upon an acquisition of a target company, all acquired employees are required to take a personality test that is designed to assess the long-term potential and appropriate function within an organization. This has allowed Vista to remove bias from its hiring process and boast a 35% female/male ratio which is above average but admittedly below where they want to be. There have been incredible success stories where employees at the bottom of the organization (even mailroom employees) have scored highly on the test and were trained and put in significantly higher positions.

2) ‘Bootcamp’ Style Training

After the personality/IQ assessment of employees, everyone is sent to boot camps where they’re taught best practices that were initially developed by Vista Consulting Group and augmented by companies who have gone through program ever since. The Vista Consulting Group is a team of people with operational experience — not necessarily coming from an ivy-league background but having run successful operational implementations.

“Nobody ever taught these guys the blocking and tackling of running a software company. And we do it better than any other institution on the planet.” “What we need to change, we have changed before, so we know how to do it.” “If you are a software executive, how do you build your commission structures or run your go-to-market strategy? How do you find and train talent? Who teaches you those things?” “Financial performance of a company is just a trail in the sand of the operational performance. “The more standardized the input, the more standardized the output. You have to design your system, and you have to believe in it.”

3) Driving Cross-Pollination

The training provided by Vista doesn’t end at the point of acquisition. Vista Consulting Group also facilitates events on a regular basis on a functional level (e.g. sales, customer, development tracks) and executive level (CXO track) to help portfolio companies work together and share learnings. Organizations that are able to perform above average are invited to present their learnings and make changes to the VSOP. This, ironically, creates a network effect in and of itself as companies are able to continuously improve Vista’s ability to generate immediate sustainable value.

What Can We Learn From Vista?

The main takeaway I had from this entire exercise is the importance of ‘vanilla’ tasks. When building a tech company, our mind jumps to the market changing solution that we need to create to become the next unicorn. However, Vista has shown that the vast majority of profitability really comes down to tasks such as:

Vista Equity Partners Standard Operating Procedures

1. Implementing a CRM solution and getting everyone to use it

2. Building a commission structure that balances the top-line and bottom-line

3. Managing development teams so that the company can ship as fast as possible

4. Onboarding customers

5. Hiring people at the right time

Vista Equity Partners Chicago

6. Building a strong culture and retaining talent

7. Understanding your ‘moat’ (how to qualify prospects/customers)

For those looking into the tech space, this should shed some light into the non-developer tasks that are essential to growing businesses. As the number of software companies continue to grow, I expect Vista to expand significantly and become the ‘Berkshire Hathaway’ of software.

Equity Administration Software

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