No pilots and no slides. Before the deal, I test what AI is worth in the investment case. After it, I work with the leadership on the company's own work and leave three actions behind, each with an owner and a date.
In person, anywhere in Europe. In English, French and Italian.
Book a call How I workof companies now use AI regularly.
of CEOs have seen an impact on both costs and revenue.
The gap between use and value is the gap between an investment case and a 100-day plan.
Most leadership teams have run pilots, and many are tired of them. Adoption on its own is not a result, and neither is literacy. A fund needs a concrete answer, fast: where AI creates value in this company, which people carry it, and what happens first.
I work on the people and productivity side of value creation, from the diligence window to the first 100 days.
Three hours, no slides. We take one value creation lever from your investment case and run it live with AI, on the company's own material. You leave with three actions, owned and dated, and a clear view of what AI can and cannot do for this company.
The session opens the value creation plan, or stands alone at a portfolio review day. I have run this format for Fortune 100 C-suites and for the project financing division of Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group.
See me in action at Pycon, a major tech conference with 250+ people in attendance.
One plan that follows the deal. A fund can buy either half on its own.
I test the AI part of the investment case: how much of the margin story depends on AI, whether the target's people and workflows can carry it, and what it would take in the first 100 days. You get a short memo for the investment committee: the value at stake, the risks on the people side, and the three actions that go into the 100-day plan.
I come into the company and review what is working and what is not: the work, the people, the tools already paid for. I come back with a plan of three actions, each with an owner and a timeline, and I stay to make the first one happen. The plan covers:
I cover the people, productivity and value side. This is not a technical audit of the target's AI stack, and the governance side comes through a partner who specialises in it.
I began my career in investment banking at Perella Weinberg Partners and Goldman Sachs, and I have built due diligence research workflows for the Pritzker Organisation.
Selected work with banks, funds and family offices.
Deep research workflows for due diligence: the research run at depth, then distilled into presentations.
A session for 60 senior bankers in the project financing division in London, run live on their own work: the assessment of a wind farm.
AI work with mid-cap private equity funds and family offices in the United States.
Executive sessions that took leadership teams from scattered opinions about AI to three prioritised actions.
Companies in a private equity or family office portfolio, from the diligence window to the first months after the deal, and the operating teams that look after them. The material is always the company's own work, so the method travels across sectors.
Inside the diligence window, I look at the AI part of the investment case: how much of the margin story depends on AI, and whether the target's people and workflows can carry it. You get a short memo for the investment committee with the value at stake, the risks on the people side and the three actions that go into the 100-day plan. It is not a technical audit of the target's AI stack.
Over four to six weeks, I come into the company and review what is working and what is not: the work, the people and the tools already paid for. We agree three actions, each with an owner and a timeline, and I stay to make the first one happen, so that the 100-day plan carries AI from the start.
Yes. I am tool-agnostic. If the company has Copilot, ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini, we work with what it already pays for.
It is the other half. I cover the people, productivity and value side. The governance side, from decision rights to the board's oversight of AI, comes through a partner who specialises in it, and the two can be bought together.
It depends on the scope, the company and the timing, so I scope it on a free 30-minute call. There are no hidden extras.
I began my career in investment banking at Perella Weinberg Partners and Goldman Sachs. I then joined the OECD as an expert on the future of work, where I spent five years with governments and companies in more than ten countries on skills and new technologies. Most recently I led the world's largest practical AI community at Mindstone, with more than 32,000 members, designing and delivering AI demos and workshops for Fortune 100 C-suites.
My AI work with private equity and finance includes due diligence research workflows for the Pritzker Organisation, a session for the project financing division of Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, and work with US mid-cap funds and family offices. I am an Adjunct Professor at ISEP in Paris and hold degrees from the LSE, Cambridge and Warwick.
Tell me where you are in the deal, and we can see whether the executive session, the value creation plan or both are the right fit.
Book a callOr reach me directly: stefano@stefanopiano.com
