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We all agree: quarterly valuations are the least favorite part of the PE job. Endless reconciliation of historical financials, tweaking decade-old Excel templates, and somehow doing it all in the middle of board-meeting season.
That’s why I’m paying attention to what Carta is doing with AI. Instead of trying to replace the intellectually stimulating parts of the job—the investing part—Carta’s PE Admin solution uses AI to streamline the back-office grind: fund reporting, valuations, and portfolio data workflows.
Carta was the OG in automating manual cap-table management for the VC world. Now they’re bringing that same discipline to private equity.
If quarterly valuations eat up your team’s time, this free Carta report is worth sharing with your team to reclaim those wasted hours. It breaks down:
- How AI is reshaping fund reporting and portfolio management
- What “agentic AI” actually means for eliminating repetitive tasks
On Thursday, we shared a $2.5M EBITDA nutrition supplement business you can go acquire. In today’s piece, we dive into PE’s playbook in nutrition supplements, including Nutranext (exited to Clorox for $700M at a 3.5x REVENUE multiple).
PE Playbook: Vitamin, Minerals & Supplements (“VMS”)
State of Play
America is in a wellness frenzy. According to Pew Research Center, 80 percent (!) of adults in the United States have used supplements for dietary or other purposes.
And buy they do: U.S. supplement sales have soared from ~$49B in 2019 to almost $70B in 2024, juiced by a pandemic-era wellness frenzy.
Source: Nutrition Business Journal (NBJ)
Note: 2022 and 2023 are extrapolated estimates. All other years are from NBJ.
At the same time, 7 in 10 believe the FDA lacks the tools to protect them from dangerous products. It’s a Wild West market running on faith and marketing with new entrants popping up everyday.
So how does PE take advantage of a huge market with little trust in individual products? Through brand aggregation and building distribution into trusted sales channels.
Let’s dive into how PE firms are rolling up supplement brands (and make a killing).