AI-First Value Creation: Inside Hg's Approach to Transforming Software Companies

1 minute read

We're excited to share a fascinating conversation between Hg's Partner and Head of Value Creation, Chris Kindt, and Michael Sidgmore of Alt Goes Mainstream, a leading podcast exploring the intersection of alternative investments, culture, and innovation.

In this wide-ranging discussion, Chris provides a rare window into how Hg has built one of private equity's most sophisticated value creation capabilities—a 60-person team supporting portfolio companies that collectively represent over €180 billion in enterprise value.

Listen to the full episode: Alt Goes Mainstream Podcast

Key Insights from the Conversation

Building Value Creation at Scale

  • How Hg grew its value creation team from 4 to 60 specialists organized across eight functional areas

  • The importance of thinking like a tech conglomerate rather than a traditional PE operations team

  • Creating systematic solutions through strategic partnerships, proprietary software, and cross-functional collaboration

The AI Revolution in Private Equity

  • Why AI represents the single biggest value creation lever in the past 12 months

  • The shift from "co-pilot" efficiency gains (10-15%) to "agentic" AI delivering 10-20X productivity improvements in specific tasks

  • How Hg has become an "AI-first" investment firm, applying the same transformation internally that it drives with portfolio companies

Engineering Transformation

  • Real-world results: Teams working AI-first have reduced product development timelines from 12-15 months to under three months

  • The partnership with Cognition's Devin and other AI engineering agents enabling mid-level engineers to hand off tasks and achieve 10X leverage

  • Why software engineering represents the most significant AI opportunity today

What Matters Now

  • Organizational agility has become more critical than ever—not necessarily correlated with company size

  • The importance of backing businesses with true vertical domain expertise and proprietary data

  • Why "prompt whispering" and discipline around AI outputs are essential skills for the modern workforce

Looking Ahead

  • The acceleration of agentic AI's impact across customer support, product development, and operations

  • The evolution from operational efficiency to solving entire customer workflows—"service as software"

Listen Now

Full Episode: Alt Goes Mainstream with Chris Kindt

About Alt Goes Mainstream: Alt Goes Mainstream explores how alternative investments are becoming accessible to a broader audience, featuring conversations with leading investors, operators, and innovators at the intersection of finance and culture. Subscribe at altgoesmainstream.substack.com.

📽️ More from Hg on Alt Goes Mainstream

This conversation with Chris Kindt is part of a three-episode series featuring Hg's leadership on Alt Goes Mainstream:

Episode 1: Building Hg Wealth Martina Sanow, Head of Hg Wealth, discusses creating institutional-quality investment access for private investors, building a business within a business, and how Hg transforms good companies into great ones through partnership and operational excellence. Listen to Martina Sanow on Alt Goes Mainstream →https://altgoesmainstream.substack.com/p/hgs-martina-sanow-unlocking-opportunities

Episode 2: What is Mission-Critical Software? Hg's Senior Partner and Co-Head of Investments, Nic Humphries, explores the firm's investment philosophy, the power of mission-critical software, AI's transformative impact on the industry, and how Hg builds global software champions through long-term private market investing. Listen to Nic Humphries on Alt Goes Mainstream →https://altgoesmainstream.substack.com/p/hgs-nic-humphries-investing-at-an

Episode 3: AI-First Value Creation (This Episode) Chris Kindt, Partner and Head of Value Creation, reveals how Hg's 60-person value creation team drives transformation across the portfolio and why AI represents the biggest value creation opportunity in private equity today. ➡️ https://altgoesmainstream.substack.com/p/hgs-chris-kindt-ais-transformative

Related Insights:

  • Why European Software?

  • The Hg Fusion Evergreen Fund

  • Meet the Hg Wealth Team

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