Welcome to The Business Buying Academy with Sieva Kozinsky. Here's what we have in store for you today:

• Want to get your business in front of my audience?
  ​
• He built a $63 billion playbook
  ​
• Copy this playbook for buying $2 billion in businesses

🔑Market your business to Sieva's Business Business Academy audience

We began testing with our first advertisers last year, and it turns out this community is incredibly engaged. With 70,000 operators, investors, and "acquisition curious" reading this letter each week, we drove customers for advertisers ranging from Vesto (treasury management platform) to Mainshares (sourcing investors for SMB acquisitions).

We are looking for a couple new advertisers to partner with this year as we launch a few new products.

Interested in marketing your business to this audience? Just respond to this newsletter and say hi.

🔑 How to Make $63 billion: Build a Playbook

Today we're going to look at one of my favorite PE firms, Vista Equity Partners.

They've grown to a powerhouse in enterprise software investments since being founded in 2000 by Robert F. Smith, managing $100 billion in assets and owning 90+ companies.

Robert Smith also came up with one of my favorite quotes about investing:

Vista focuses on buying tech companies and turning them into the highest-performers in their industries (we'll get into their framework for doing that in a bit).

For aspiring business buyers, Vista's approach offers lessons in operational discipline and value creation.

The key to it all: The Playbook.

Vista has codified every rule they've learned after deploying billions in capital into an operational playbook that guides every deal they do.

Let's break it down.

Investment Thesis

Vista's core strategy revolves around enterprise software, data, and technology-enabled businesses, where they see massive potential for innovation and efficiency gains.

They target upper-middle-market and large companies, typically with enterprise values between $750 million and $10 billion, primarily in North America.

The thesis is straightforward:

Invest in resilient, recurring-revenue models that solve real business problems, then apply rigorous operational improvements to drive sustainable growth and minimize risk.

Unlike generalist PE firms, Vista's specialization in software, honed over 25 years, allows them to spot undervalued assets in a competitive market.

They emphasize long-term value creation through themes like AI adoption, cloud transitions, and productivity enhancements, often partnering with founders to scale without losing core strengths.

Standard Operating Procedures

At the heart of Vista's playbook is their proprietary Vista Standard Operating Procedures (VSOPs), a 100+ point guide that's essentially a blueprint for turning good software companies into great ones.

Developed over the last 25+ years, VSOPs cover everything from contract administration (ensuring full payment for services and code usage) to sales incentives that promote cross-selling and upselling.

The process starts post-acquisition with a high-impact 100-day plan:

• Streamline costs
• Boost renewal rates
• Refine pricing models
• Invest in talent development.

Vista's Value Creation team (a dedicated ops team) works hand-in-hand with portfolio leadership to implement these, treating transformations like a "factory process" for efficiency.

Aspiring business owners can learn from this: standardize your operations early to scale predictably.

Vista's low loss ratio (under 5% on investments) proves how process discipline turns acquisitions into cash machines.

That's a lot of PE fluff.

And ayone can have good strategies on paper.

But what about some actual deals they've done?

Let's take a look at a couple.

Key Deals and Outcomes

Vista has closed over 600 software deals (including companies they since sold and bolt-ons to their existing portfolios). They've focused on take-privates and add-ons that leverage their VSOPs for quick value unlocks.

Here are two standout examples that highlight their buy-and-build strategy.

Marketo (2016): Vista took marketing automation leader Marketo private for $1.8 billion. The company was growing quickly, but struggled to reach profitability. Enter Vista.

Many critiqued the acquisition. "Vista is overpaying" some said, while others predicted that Marketo could never be profitable.

Applying VSOPs, they streamlined expenses, improved renewal rates, and integrated products for upsell opportunities. The result: In just two years, Vista sold Marketo to Adobe for $4.75 billion, delivering over 2.5x returns and validating their operational playbook.

TransFirst (2014): Vista bought this payment processing software firm TransFirst for $1.5 billion. Payment processing was in the middle of a seismic shift to integrated payments (that's payment software embedded directly into company's existing software, like a CRM or POS).

Using VSOPs, they revamped pricing, sales incentives, and contract management, boosting EBITDA margins and growth.

In under 18 months, Vista exited for $2.35 billion, tripling invested capital in a surprisingly short time.

Lessons: Target industries in flux where your expertise can accelerate change.

Vista's deals often involve $6-8 billion deployments annually, with recent ones like Smartsheet ($8.4B with Blackstone in 2025) showing that their strategy works at scale.

Overall, they've returned $63 billion to investors.

Their founder attributes their success to that 100+ point playbook that's been refined and improved thousands of times as they buy, operate, and sell hundreds of companies.

🔑 Speaking of Playbooks, this Investor has one of the Best

John Caple, partner & co-founder at Hidden Harbor Capital Partners, has raised $2 billion to buy "boring" businesses like manufacturers and HVAC companies.

I sat down with him to figure out how he learned the private equity business, how he raised $2 billion, and where he finds companies to buy.

He even broke down his detailed approach to running companies after he buys them.

If you want to buy businesses, this interview is a must-watch.

​Watch on YouTube​

​

Have a great day,

Sieva

P.S. - Are you hiring? Get started with top global talent from Somewhere (I'm a customer and investor)

​

What did you think of today's newsletter? Rate this newsletter using the poll below:

​

Disclaimer: nothing here is investment advice. Please do your own research. The information above is just for information and learning.

​

​

​​

​