Brand or expertise: the 2x2 that decides which PE firms pull ahead

There is a quadrant of the middle market where firms often struggle, and a surprising number are sitting in it without knowing. They have no real brand and no differentiated expertise, and in a fundraising market this tight, that combination is what leaves a firm hard to tell apart from the field, and hard to fund.

Too many firms are chasing the same deals, LPs are writing fewer checks, and they have nothing to point to that says why a manager deserves one. Gary Crittenden, the former Citigroup CFO now at HGGC, has a clear way of mapping who pulls ahead and who gets stuck. It fits on a 2x2, and the first thing it tells you is the cell you don't want to be in.

The cell you don't want to be in

To run this thought experiment, plot two axes. One is brand equity: does the market know your name and associate it with something? The other is differentiated expertise: can you do something for a company that most other buyers can't? The firm with neither is in the cell Crittenden says you don't want to be in, and the tell is in how those firms describe themselves.

"If you have a differentiated expertise and you have some branding that is important for you, that's the cell on the matrix that you want to be in." — Gary Crittenden, HGGC

"I probably heard 25 firms in the last year that say our skill set is our ability to work with middle managers," Crittenden says. "That's like saying our skill set is being a good neighbor." It's a wry line, but it lands, because it's one of the most common self-descriptions in the mid-market, and it says very little. Getting along with management is table stakes. A firm that can only claim it works well with management teams has told an LP exactly why it looks interchangeable with the other 24.

The two ways out

The way out runs along one of the two axes, and ideally both. "If you have a differentiated expertise and you have some branding that is important for you, that's the cell on the matrix that you want to be in," Crittenden says.

Brand equity is the first lever. It’s the firm whose name on a cap table opens doors, attracts talent, and signals to the next seller that this buyer is credible. Differentiated expertise is the second. It’s an operating capability, a sector edge, or a playbook that measurably changes the company's trajectory after close. A firm strong on either axis has something to sell an LP. A firm strong on both is in the quadrant that compounds. The point of the 2x2 isn't to admire the winning cell. It's to be honest about which one you are actually in today. Crittenden doesn't treat it as pass/fail, either. There are top-tier firms, a broad middle, and the strugglers in the bottom corner, with plenty of firms sitting on the edges in between. The map is a way to locate yourself, not a verdict.

Why the mid-market is worth fighting for

Here’s the part that makes the climb worth it: the prize is structurally better at this size. "The return profile of the middle market is just better than it is in a larger company," Crittenden says, and the math behind that is intuitive. Doubling or tripling a smaller company is more achievable than moving the needle on a mega-cap, because the operational improvements that drive returns have more room to run and the entry multiples are lower.

That said, the advantage is not free. The mid-market is more competitive than it was, financing is harder to come by, and some firms are still carrying legacy marks that complicate fresh fundraising. The structural edge is real, but it only accrues to firms with a genuine reason to win the deal beyond the financial model.

What still raises capital in a brutal market

The fundraising market has thinned the field, which is exactly why differentiation has stopped being a branding exercise and become a survival one. Crittenden is direct about who still gets funded: "Funds that have a solid return profile and they have a unique expertise, those, and they have access to LPs, I think they can still raise money."

Read that as a three-part test. Solid returns get you in the room. Unique expertise gives the LP a reason to choose you over the firm with similar numbers. And LP access, the relationships you have already built, is what turns a meeting into a commitment. Crittenden points, lightly, to HGGC's own recent Fund V raise as a sign that firms clearing all three bars can still get it done, though he's quick to note he wasn't involved in that raise and credits the team that ran it. The firms stuck in the bottom corner are the ones explaining why this quarter was an anomaly.

Turning the 2x2 into an LP narrative

Knowing your quadrant is internal work. Winning the commitment means translating it into a story an LP believes. That story has three load-bearing pieces: the positioning (the one sentence that says what you do that others can't), the access (the relationships that prove you see deals others don't), and the track record that backs both. The firms that raise in this market are the ones whose narrative connects all three, where the brand and the expertise are evidenced by who they know and what those relationships have produced, not just asserted on a pitch page.

This is where the firm's relationship history becomes part of its brand. The network a firm has built, which founders and operators and co-investors it can actually reach, is not a soft asset. It is the proof behind the positioning. A relationship intelligence CRM is what makes that network legible: it surfaces who at the firm has a path to a given operator, how deep the relationship runs, and how the firm's access has compounded over years. Affinity is the AI-first private capital CRM built for exactly that, and for a firm trying to evidence its brand and access to skeptical LPs, the relationship graph is where the receipts live.

A two-minute self-test

Before the next LP conversation, run the diagnostic. Can you name the differentiated expertise a company gets by selling to you, in one sentence, without using the word "partnership"? If a competing GP described their edge the way you describe yours, would an LP be able to tell you apart? When you claim access, can you point to specific relationships and what they have produced, or is it a general claim about your network? And if you are honest about brand and expertise, which quadrant are you in, and what is the single move that gets you to a better one?

If those questions are hard to answer, that is worth knowing before an LP asks them. The bottom corner is a comfortable place to sit, right up until the fund doesn't close.