Global collaboration is fundamental for us.
When Advent was founded in 1984, the world was a lot less connected than it is today and yet there we were on the ground in a dozen countries. Early partners needed to make a real effort to work across borders, share ideas, accept compromises, and create consensus. It attracted a type of person willing to be firm first, team oriented, and low ego – and we’ve been nurturing that culture ever since.
Our business is about partnering with people.
Our culture of internal collaboration naturally lends itself to working well with others externally. Whether it is supporting management teams and founders, investing alongside other like-minded private equity or venture capital firms, working with a corporate or any other stakeholder in a business – we want to be their partner of choice and do everything we can to make them successful. If we do that well, our business takes care of itself.
We try to have a “growth mindset.”
Advent is a firm that looks to learn from others and learn from itself – both successes as well as failures. There is a real search for best practices, a willingness to embrace challenges and an openness to pivot when circumstances change. This is a critical mentality for supporting the development of technology businesses, who often face fast moving markets and intense competitive dynamics.
We will always be innovating.
We continuously look for opportunities to invest in resources to give ourselves and our portfolio a competitive advantage in delivering profitable growth at scale. In the past, this took the form of our operating partner program and then our portfolio support group. Today, we are investing heavily in digital capabilities to find new investee companies as well as the talent to help us unlock their potential. I can’t wait to see what the next decade brings.