Finishing Up: The Future of Private Capital
We’ve reached the end of our retelling of Cyril Demaria’s “Introduction to Private Equity, Debt and Real Assets.” It’s been quite a journey—from Christopher Columbus to multi-billion dollar mega-funds.
Private equity
Part III: Trends or Buzzes? the Future of Private Markets
For a long time, private equity was a small, quiet industry that stayed below the radar. But those days are over. Today, it’s a global powerhouse, and that change is bringing some big questions.
Chapter 5: It's All About the People
If you’ve ever bought a house, you know it’s a long, stressful process. You have to get an inspection, talk to the bank, and negotiate with the seller. Now imagine doing that for a multi-million dollar company.
Chapter 4: Beyond Equity - Private Debt and Real Assets
Most people think of private equity as just owning a piece of a company. But the “private markets” universe is much bigger than that. It also includes two other major categories: Private Debt and Private Real Assets.
Chapter 4: The Universe of Investment
Private equity isn’t just one thing. It’s a whole universe that follows a company from its very first day until it’s a giant corporation.
Chapter 3: The J-Curve - Why Things Get Worse Before They Get Better
If you ever invest in a private equity fund, don’t panic when you look at your statement after the first year. It’s probably going to show that you’ve lost money. This is what we call the J-Curve.
Part II: We Are All Private Market Investors (Sort Of)
Here’s a fun fact: you’re probably already an investor in private markets.
Even if you’ve never heard of a “General Partner,” if you have a pension fund or an insurance policy, your money is likely being funneled into private companies. Big institutions like banks and pension funds take the premiums we pay and invest them in non-listed companies to get better returns.
Chapter 2: Was Private Equity Actually a French Invention?
We usually think of the USA as the birthplace of modern finance. But when it comes to venture capital, the story has a very French twist.
Chapter 1: The Heart of the Machine - The Entrepreneur
We’ve talked about history, but let’s get into the real engine of private equity: the entrepreneur.
Cyril Demaria makes one thing very clear: without entrepreneurs, private equity has no reason to exist. The entrepreneur is the one who takes a bunch of separate pieces—time, money, ideas—and turns them into something way bigger than the sum of its parts.
Chapter 1: From Explorers to Entrepreneurs
We saw how Christopher Columbus was basically a 15th-century startup founder. But for private equity to become a real industry, something big had to change. We needed a shift from “kings and queens” to “partners and contracts.”
Chapter 1: Christopher Columbus Was the First VC
If you think venture capital is a modern invention from Silicon Valley, think again. It’s actually hundreds of years old. In fact, Cyril Demaria argues that Christopher Columbus was one of the first great venture capitalists.
Introduction to PE Part 5: Why We Get Private Equity Wrong
Because it’s so hard to get good data on private equity, people start taking shortcuts. And those shortcuts lead to some big mistakes.
Introduction to PE Part 4: The Business of Data in Private Markets
I already talked about why private companies are so secretive. But there’s a whole industry built on trying to find their secrets anyway.
Introduction to PE Part 3: The Secret World of Private Markets
One of the biggest problems with private companies is that they don’t have to tell you anything. In the stock market, companies have to share their financial reports all the time. But in the private world, there’s no law saying they have to.
Introduction to PE Part 2: The Confusion Between PE and LBO
The words “private equity” get thrown around a lot. But people use them in different ways, and it gets really confusing.
Introduction to PE Part 1: More Than Just Equations
Cyril Demaria started this book because he couldn’t find anything good to read about private equity. Most of what was out there just didn’t make sense. It didn’t match what actually happens in the real world.
Let's Talk About Private Equity: Starting a New Book Series
I’ve been reading a lot of books on finance lately. Most of them are either too simple or way too complicated for anyone who doesn’t have a PhD in math. But I found one that actually makes sense. It’s called “Introduction to Private Equity, Debt and Real Assets” by Cyril Demaria.
Final Thoughts on Introduction to Private Equity, Debt, and Real Assets
So we made it through the whole book. Seventeen posts later, here’s where I stand on “Introduction to Private Equity, Debt, and Real Assets” by Cyril Demaria (3rd edition, Wiley, ISBN 978-1-119-53737-3).
Business Case: How Advent International Made a Fortune in Brazilian Education
After eight chapters of theory, Demaria drops a real case study on us. Not a made-up example. An actual deal. Advent International investing in Kroton Educacional SA, a Brazilian education company. This is where all the concepts from the book come alive.
Chapter 8: Where Private Equity Is Headed - The Conclusion
This is the final chapter. Demaria wraps up the whole book by looking forward. Where is private equity going? What are the big risks ahead? And could the industry actually destroy itself by being too successful? Let’s go through it.
Chapter 7: The Dark Side of PE - Greed, Destruction and the Push for Transparency
Every industry has a chapter it would rather skip. For private equity, this is that chapter. Demaria titles it “Private Equity and Ethics: A Culture Clash,” and he does not hold back. Fraud, job destruction, fake philanthropy, and the long fight for transparency. Let’s go through it.
Chapter 6: Is Private Equity Going Mainstream? Trends, Bubbles and Dry Powder
Private equity used to be the quiet kid in the back of the finance classroom. Small groups of rich people pooling money together to buy companies, fix them up, sell them. Nobody outside the industry really cared. That changed. PE firms got huge, went public, and started buying companies the size of small countries. Chapter 6 of Demaria’s book asks the obvious question: is private equity going mainstream? And if so, what does that mean for everyone involved?
Chapter 5: The 7 Steps of a Private Equity Deal
You want to buy a company. Or at least a piece of one. How does that actually work? Chapter 5 of Demaria’s book lays it out in 7 steps. The whole thing takes 3 to 18 months depending on the deal. And really, the entire process boils down to one word: trust. Buyer and seller have to trust each other enough to make a deal happen. Let’s walk through it.
Chapter 4 Part 3: Private Debt, Real Estate and Other Alternative Assets
This is the final piece of Chapter 4. We covered venture capital, growth capital, LBOs and special situations before. Now Demaria walks us through the rest of the private markets universe: private debt, real assets, and a handful of other instruments that sit at the edges of the asset class.
Chapter 4 Part 2: Leveraged Buyouts and Special Situations - When PE Gets Serious
If venture capital is the glamorous part of private equity, LBOs are where the real money lives. According to Demaria, leveraged buyouts represent roughly 69% of all PE fund investments. This is the heavy machinery of finance, and Chapter 4 spends serious time explaining how it works.
Chapter 4 Part 1: Venture Capital and Growth Capital - Funding the Next Big Thing
Chapter 4 is where Demaria gets into the actual strategies private equity funds use to make money. He starts with the one everyone has heard of: venture capital. The stuff that turns garage projects into billion-dollar companies. Or, more often, burns through cash and produces nothing.
Chapter 3 Part 3: Measuring PE Performance - IRR, Multiples and Why Benchmarks Are Tricky
So you want to know if a private equity fund is actually good? Turns out, that’s way harder than it sounds. There is no stock ticker refreshing every second. No public quarterly earnings call. You are stuck with imperfect tools and incomplete data. Welcome to Section 3.3 through 3.5 of Demaria’s book.
Chapter 3 Part 2: How PE Funds Actually Work - Fees, Incentives and Power
So you have a bunch of big investors who want to put money into private equity but don’t want to pick companies themselves. What do they do? They hand their money to a fund manager and say “go make us rich.” Sounds simple. But the details of how that relationship works, how the fund manager gets paid, and what stops them from just enriching themselves at your expense? That is where it gets interesting.
Chapter 3 Part 1: You're Already Investing in Private Equity (You Just Don't Know It)
Here’s something most people don’t realize. If you have a pension, pay insurance premiums, or even have a retirement savings account, there’s a good chance some of your money is sitting in private equity right now. You didn’t choose it. Nobody asked you. But that’s how the system works.
Chapter 2 Part 2: Private Equity in Europe and Emerging Markets
In part 1 we talked about how the US basically invented private equity. Now the question is: can everyone else just copy the homework? Demaria’s answer is basically “it’s complicated.” Europe tried to adapt the American model. Emerging markets are still figuring things out. And the results are… mixed.
Chapter 2 Part 1: How the USA Built the Private Equity Machine
Chapter 2 of Demaria’s book opens with a fun question: is modern private equity a French invention? The word “entrepreneur” is French. The guy who basically created modern venture capital, Georges Doriot, was French. But he did it in America. At Harvard, not in Paris. That tells you something about where the conditions were right.
Chapter 1: The Wild Origins of Private Equity - From Columbus to Modern Finance
Chapter 1 of Cyril Demaria’s book opens with a story you probably did not expect in a finance textbook. Christopher Columbus. Yep, the guy with the ships.
What Is Private Equity Anyway? the Book's Introduction Explained
You would think that a thing called “private equity” would be easy to define. It has two words. One means private. The other means equity. Should be simple, right?
Retelling: Introduction to Private Equity, Debt, and Real Assets by Cyril Demaria
I just finished reading “Introduction to Private Equity, Debt, and Real Assets” by Cyril Demaria (3rd edition, Wiley, ISBN 978-1-119-53737-3) and I wanted to share what I learned.