Case study · Operating partners
Team Theory turned hours of transcripts into a memo their deal partner reads.
- AUM
- $51B
- portfolio companies
- 49
- person talent team
- 2
The context
A $51B San Francisco PE firm with 49 portfolio companies and a compact talent team. The talent lead drafts the candidate memos; the firm’s head of IT supports on tooling.
The pain
The talent lead’s biggest time sink: working by hand through 1.5–3-hour interview transcripts to find the high-signal quotes.
A firm-wide private GPT that came back “too generic”: “we do a lot of finessing.”
The outcome
Not summarization: the evidentiary case a deal partner will read, in the house style. A real slate per search, not a single candidate.
What changed
Four inputs go in: the transcript, the job spec, prior interview feedback, and an example of the partner’s own past memo style.
Out comes a structured memo (strengths, risks, where feedback aligns and diverges) that maps the people the candidate recruited and ties each to what the candidate said.
Seven portfolio companies, 36 executives, 11 roles: 3.3 executives assessed per role defined.
How they use it.
Interview synthesis
A 1.5–3-hour transcript becomes a spec-anchored memo.
Candidate and reference reports
Confidential write-ups shaped for the deal team.
Recruited-individual mapping
Who the candidate hired, tied to what they said about them.
Search brief and spec writing
The up-front brief, before a search firm is briefed.
Investment-team recruiting
MBA interviews, associate exit interviews, VP recruiting feedback.
Custom underwriting memo
A template shaped for a deal-partner audience.
“Something that knows us, knows the output we want — versus a custom GPT that doesn’t know what we look for.”
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