PE -> CFO at Portco -> Back to Investing

Ignore title. Currently a little over 5 years into my career. I joined a small growth equity shop straight out of college as the firm's first analyst hire, so no IB experience. The fund took a control position in a mid-stage tech company at the beginning of 2024, and later that year I moved over to that company to run strategic finance for them. 

Original mandate was mostly to build out the finance function, clean up existing processes, rebuild the operating model, lead pricing work, etc., but the role has expanded pretty significantly since then.

I've now been told I will formally be given the CFO title by the end of this year. The fund is aiming to exit the deal by the end of '28, so assuming that timeline holds I would have ~4 years of operating experience by the time we sell, including a couple years as CFO.

My question is this: assuming we have a successful exit, do I have a solid story to move back to the buy side afterward?

The way I would frame it is that I started on the investment side out of college, was involved with the company around the time of the initial investment, moved into the business to help build out the finance function, ultimately became CFO, and then helped take the company through an exit. Ideally I'd like to use that experience to move to a larger/more established LMM or growth equity shop, particularly one that values operating experience.

The part I'm less clear on is how much the lack of traditional IB -> PE track will matter at that point. I'll have transaction experience and should have a fairly differentiated operating background for someone my age, but I also won't have the cookie-cutter resume and will have been away from a traditional investing seat for several years.

Would be interested to hear how people on the buy side would view this profile post-exit, and whether the CFO/operating experience would be enough to make the move back relatively realistic. Thanks.