When Hg was named Large-Cap House of the Year at the Real Deals Private Equity Awards earlier this year, the announcement felt more like confirmation than surprise.
The award recognised a period that included major fundraising success, continued deal activity and a series of significant exits, achievements that stand out in a market where many firms have found liquidity harder to come by.
As headline sponsors of the awards, we wanted to understand what sat behind this prestigious win. So I caught up with Chris Fielding, a Partner at Hg, to discuss the operating model, investment philosophy and value creation approach that helped set Hg apart.
The conversation covered everything from AI and product leadership to exits and portfolio collaboration. But beneath all of it was one consistent theme: Hg’s success appears less about reacting to the current market and more about the cumulative advantage of a strategy the firm has been building for more than a decade.
Hg is unusual in its level of specialisation. The firm focuses on B2B software, services and data businesses, investing across multiple fund sizes but within a relatively concentrated set of sectors. Investment activity is grouped into specialist clusters, creating opportunities for shared learning between founders, executives and boards.
As our conversation unfolded, it became increasingly clear that this focus sits at the heart of many of the factors that contributed to the award win.
A decade of investment in operational capability
Much has been written about private equity’s race to embrace AI. Chris’s view is that the differentiator is no longer talking about the technology, it’s creating the infrastructure to use it effectively.
Hg’s AI programme now consists of around 150 specialists supporting 50-60 portfolio businesses across software, data and services. At any given time, roughly 2,000 projects are running across the portfolio. Stand out features include Hg Catalyst, an AI product incubator which sends ‘tiger teams’ into its portfolio companies to create agentic software products, as well as Hg’s Academies – often week-long immersions – where the firm is helping to retrain engineering and other functions across the portfolio.
Importantly, Chris was quick to stress that not all of them succeed.
“There are about 2,000 projects running at any one time in the portfolio. Some work and some may not, but you must innovate” he said. “And this doesn’t mean just putting AI on everything, it’s more about using deep domain knowledge to know what’s valuable in your vertical and to your customers.”
The advantage comes from the volume of experimentation. Successful initiatives are measured, shared and scaled across the portfolio, creating a growing body of evidence about what works and what doesn’t.
That approach appears to be delivering tangible results. Hg is seeing productivity improvements of up to 40% in engineering and support functions across parts of the portfolio, alongside a budgeted EBITDA impact of over $250 million this year.
For Chris, this isn’t a technology story. It’s a value creation story.
That said, he was quick to caution against assuming that today’s advantages will last forever. Despite his optimism about AI’s potential, Chris repeatedly returned to the importance of maintaining a healthy degree of scepticism.
Even within a portfolio of around 60 companies, he expects some businesses will find the next phase of the market more challenging. The task, he argued, is not simply identifying strong businesses, but continually testing assumptions, recognising emerging threats and avoiding complacency.
Why product leadership has become the critical hire
One of the clearest insights from the conversation was how dramatically product leadership has risen in importance.
According to Chris, the most heavily recruited role across the portfolio over the past 18 months has not been CEO, CFO or CRO. It’s been Chief Product Officer.
That reflects a broader shift in what Hg looks for both in new investments and existing portfolio companies. Strong product leadership, deep customer understanding and technology that’s difficult to replicate have moved from desirable characteristics to essential ones.
“The number one position we’ve been recruiting for across the portfolio in the last 18 months has been the Chief Product Officer,” Chris explained.
The impact extends beyond hiring. Chris described businesses rebuilding engineering organisations around stronger product and technology leadership, often with smaller but more highly capable teams.
The implication is significant. As AI accelerates software development, competitive advantage increasingly comes from deciding what to build rather than simply having the capacity to build it.
The portfolio effect
If there was one differentiator Chris returned to repeatedly, it was the power of the Hg ecosystem itself.
The firm operates across eight sector-focused clusters, allowing portfolio leaders to learn from peers facing similar challenges. CEOs, CFOs, Chairs and functional leaders regularly share experiences, compare approaches and exchange practical solutions.
The image Chris painted was not one of formal knowledge transfer programmes but of an interconnected network of operators.
“If you’re a CEO, CFO or CRO, you can call your opposite number and ask what they’ve seen work and not work.”
That network appears particularly valuable in an environment where technology, customer expectations and operating models are shifting rapidly.
For founders and management teams, Chris believes the ability to access hundreds of peers facing similar opportunities and challenges has become a genuine source of competitive advantage.
Building for exit from day one
The Large-Cap House of the Year award recognised firms across a range of criteria, including exits. In that context, Hg’s recent realisations are particularly notable.
Chris pointed to three factors.
The first is a long-standing focus on DPI, supported by a dedicated Realisation Committee that has operated separately from the Investment Committee for a decade.
The second is a disciplined approach to buyer mapping. For Hg’s software and data businesses, likely acquirers are identified and cultivated long before a sale process begins.
The third is a willingness to build businesses capable of succeeding in public markets, keeping IPOs as a viable exit route where appropriate.
None of these strategies were introduced in response to today’s market conditions. The point, Chris argued, is that exit preparedness has always been embedded within the investment process.
Why Hg won
By the end of our conversation, the answer to the original question felt clearer.
Hg’s award-winning year was certainly helped by strong fundraising, investment activity and exits. But those outcomes appear to be symptoms rather than causes.
What emerged from Chris’s perspective was a firm that has spent years building specialist expertise, operational infrastructure and portfolio connectivity around a single sector focus. AI may be the most visible expression of that today, but the underlying principles of domain specialisation, knowledge sharing, disciplined execution and long-term planning have all been in place much longer.
In a market where many investors are still working out what the next chapter of value creation looks like, a large part of Hg’s advantage may simply be that it started writing that chapter years ago.
Chris is a partner at Hg with particular focus on software and data within the Regulatory and Compliance spaces. Chris has acted across many investments over two decades. He currently sits on the boards of Ideagen, CTAIMA, CUBE, Quantios and Bright.
Chris read Classics at Oxford and began his financial career in UK M&A at Citigroup. He was subsequently a partner at Doughty Hanson and CGE. Chris has also served as an infantry platoon commander in the British Army.