Most innovative Private Equity firms

WovenLight is founded by the guy who started QuantumBlack, a global data science consultancy purchased by McKinsey. He’s teaming up with an MD from Charterhouse, a classic MM European firm (kind of like a WCAS).
 

The premise is seconding data professionals into organizations to build data teams. in the investment process, you can identify what value you can capture through a data function, then in the ownership period, you can help the company develop a data function such that it is a standalone department in the way sales, operations, or marketing is.

The competitive advantage grows overtime as you are able to retain metadata from deals, which is where the insights lie. Eg you may collect an SFDC file in diligence, realize with your data team you can boost sales 4-8% by doing [activity], still decide not to pursue the deal, be required to destroy the SFDC file, and STILL keep the meta data so that you have a greater data set off of which to draw more complete insights in future applications.

You are also able to compete more aggressively in auctions because you will find anywhere from an incremental 5-15% returns that are unavailable to those without data functions.

On the actual fund formation side, they have massive moats for a fund of their variety, and so have an enduring head start among other advantages that give them access to funding and deal size (do not ask for more detail).

I do not work for or with this team. I do believe it is the single greatest innovation currently happening in PE. With these sorts of competitive advantages, and the way competing in PE is trending, it will become a table stakes function over time.