How we think.
Essays and white papers from Chroma Partners on small businesses, growth, and where returns in private markets come from next.
The Red Queen economy: why the AI gap is widening, and who can keep up
Every AI implementation now has a half-life measured in months. Why the gap between leaders and laggards is widening instead of closing, and why the capability to keep up must be owned and rewarded at the firm level.
The right to actuate: why the AI deployment boom will reward owners
The AI labs have become consultancies. A company is a bundle of options that AI has made exercisable, and the payoff goes to whoever holds the right to act, not whoever is paid to deploy.
The last signature: a response to The Commanding Heights
When intelligence becomes nearly free, the scarce input is accountability. Why the businesses that hold a licensed, liable signature are one of the last Commanding Heights still for sale.
Where the puck is going: the case for disciplined opportunism
Sectors don’t create returns. Moments do. Why Chroma specialises in a transformation, not a sector, and five places we think the next moments will form.
The orphanage: inside the trillions private equity and venture can’t sell
Hidden inside 32,000 unsold companies is a pool of small, profitable businesses nobody upstream is paying attention to. Who should own them, and how to buy them well.
Small is the new scale: the next great compounder will be built below $10M of EBITDA
Three heresies: scale is now a liability, the roll-up is dead but the compounder isn’t, and AI makes small companies more valuable, not less.
The venture bet hiding in buyout: why LPs should back the hungry new firm
Track records predict less than LPs pay for them. Backing a new buyout firm early offers venture-like upside with a buyout’s downside.
The quiet backbone: why America’s next decade of growth runs through its small industrial businesses
Small businesses carry nearly half the private economy. Their owners are retiring, their productivity is falling behind, and their technicians are leaving. Here is what fixing it is worth.
Where alpha goes next: from public markets to private
Public markets went through three stages: beta got cheap, the average active manager lost, and the remaining alpha concentrated in a few idiosyncratic firms. Private equity is next.
Small businesses don’t need a diet. They need a sales team.
Most small businesses are lean because they’ve had to be. Why we lead with growth instead of cuts, and how Chroma is built for it.
Small-cap transformation: the strategy and the future of private equity
The old buyout levers are fading. Why the next returns come from growing businesses below $10M of EBITDA, and what it takes to do it.