# At a buy-and-build, creating a strong brand is often a missed opportunity

Niels Langereis, 25 July 2026. First published on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/buy-and-build-creating-strong-brand-often-missed-niels-langereis-siyye

> There is a confident genre of content right now: the fractional CMO who unlocks EBITDA for private equity. Almost every piece frames brand the same way, and almost every piece misses where the value in a buy-and-build actually sits.

There is a confident, well-produced genre of content right now: the fractional CMO who unlocks EBITDA for private equity. It is competent and it is everywhere. Almost every piece frames brand the same way, as a soft asset you sharpen right before sale, a lever you pull to lift the multiple once the buyers are in the room.

That view is not wrong, but in my eyes it is aimed at the wrong year.

The data underneath it is real. The value-creation story in private equity has genuinely shifted from financial engineering to operational growth. In software buyouts over the past decade, [Bain & Company](https://www.linkedin.com/company/bain-and-company/) found revenue growth drove 52% of value creation, multiple expansion 42%, and margin improvement just 6%, almost all of it in top-quartile deals ([Bain, Global Private Equity Report 2025).](https://www.bain.com/insights/topics/global-private-equity-report/)

Cheap leverage and multiple expansion have faded; what you actually do to the business is back in fashion. So marketers point at the trend and say, reasonably, that brand belongs in the value-creation story. Where they get it right is that brand is not decorative. Where I differ is on when it pays.

I watched this from the inside [Normec](https://www.linkedin.com/company/normec-group/) , a Dutch PE-backed buy-and-build that grew rapidly and strongly by acquiring company after company. The platform brand was not something we dressed up for a future buyer. It was working capital. It changed the economics of the deals themselves, long before anyone is drawing the exit timeline.

The mechanism is concrete, and it has four parts.

1. A credible platform brand changes who wants to sell to you, and at what price. A founder weighing offers is not only comparing numbers; they are deciding what their company becomes the day after they sign. It has a history, a culture that needs to be fitted in and make the transfer of power, although sometimes still painful, agreeable (source [**McKinsey & Company**](https://www.linkedin.com/company/mckinsey/) [**"Why managing culture is critical for value creation in M&A,"**](https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/m-and-a/our-insights/why-managing-culture-is-critical-for-value-creation-in-m-and-a)).

Often it is a vital part of the consideration, especially in regards to the workforce, and even though they are often not in control, they do like to understand the move to be anything more than a pay-out for the founders. So a recognised platform with a clear identity is a more attractive home than an anonymous sponsor, which moves both deal access and the price you pay to win. The best deals in a buy-and-build tend to be the proprietary ones you are invited into, not the auctions you fight through, and a brand is part of what earns the invitation. Read [INSEAD](https://www.linkedin.com/school/insead/)'s great article on this topic: [How Private Equity Firms Can Ace Buy-and-Build](https://knowledge.insead.edu/economics-finance/how-private-equity-firms-can-ace-buy-and-build) hint: value creation hinges on integration quality.

2. It shortens the trust-building phase of integration, which is where most of a deal's value is kept or lost. The purchase is the easy part; integration is where buy-and-builds succeed or fail, and the failure is rarely about the thesis or the price. It is human. Acquired teams that do not trust the new owner, customers who wait to see what changes, key people who leave.

Bain's analysis of disappointing deals found the large majority of practitioners blamed poor integration over any other single cause, and the recurring culprits were lost talent and stalled synergies rather than a flawed model. Firms that handle the cultural side of integration well are 70% more likely to hit their revenue targets (source [McKinsey & Company](https://www.linkedin.com/company/mckinsey/) ["Why managing culture is critical for value creation in M&A,"](https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/m-and-a/our-insights/why-managing-culture-is-critical-for-value-creation-in-m-and-a)). A brand that the acquired team and their customers already recognise does that reassurance work before the integration team arrives. You are not starting the relationship from zero.

3. It lets the platform present as one coherent thing to the market sooner. Cross-sell, pricing power, and a single commercial face all arrive earlier when the parts read as a whole rather than a portfolio of strangers.

4. It compounds. Each acquisition that lands well makes the next founder easier to convince and the next integration cheaper to absorb. The brand is not a fixed asset sitting on the balance sheet; it is a flywheel that turns faster with every bolt-on.

There is an old version of this idea, and it sharpens the point. For centuries, a hallmark stamped into silver let a buyer transact without re-testing the metal. The mark carried the assayer's accountability, so the cost of trust between strangers collapsed to almost nothing. A platform brand in a buy-and-build does the same job. It is a trust mark that lets founders, employees, and customers skip the expensive verification step, because someone credible has already staked their name on the standard. Fitting, given that [Normec](https://www.linkedin.com/company/normec-group/)s actual business is testing, inspection, and certification; the entire industry exists because a trusted mark is cheaper than everyone checking for themselves.

This reframes the measure. Judge brand investment in a buy-and-build only against the eventual exit multiple and you are scoring it on just one dimension. The right measures are acquisition velocity and integration cost. Same money, a different question: not what does this add to the sale price, but how much faster and cheaper does it make the next ten deals.

Which exposes the real asymmetry. Firms that wait until the exit to build brand pay for it twice. Once across all the deals that were harder than they needed to be: the founders who chose another acquirer, the integrations that dragged, the cross-sell that arrived late. Then again for the rushed pre-sale polish, which a sophisticated buyer sees through anyway. A brand assembled in eighteen months to impress a diligence team is a costume. A brand built through the platform's actual behaviour, deal after deal, is an operating asset.

> Brand is not the thing you sell at the end. It is the thing that makes every deal with new companies joining the platform easier, more trusted and more valuable

## Sources

Bain & Company, Global Private Equity Report 2025 (revenue growth 52% / multiple expansion 42% / margin 6% of value creation in software buyouts over the past decade). [https://www.bain.com/insights/topics/global-private-equity-report/](https://www.bain.com/insights/topics/global-private-equity-report/)

Bain & Company, Global Private Equity Report 2025, full PDF (the software value-creation split, verified against this copy). [https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/6790c23724cac00b732581ae/67e3320c2f25ea0a72341494_bain-report_global-private-equity-report-2025.pdf](https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/6790c23724cac00b732581ae/67e3320c2f25ea0a72341494_bain-report_global-private-equity-report-2025.pdf)

INSEAD Knowledge, How Private Equity Firms Can Ace Buy-and-Build (value creation hinges on integration quality). [https://knowledge.insead.edu/economics-finance/how-private-equity-firms-can-ace-buy-and-build](https://knowledge.insead.edu/economics-finance/how-private-equity-firms-can-ace-buy-and-build)

McKinsey's "Why managing culture is critical for value creation in M&A," *"Companies that manage culture well in integration are more than 40% more likely to meet or surpass cost synergy targets, and up to 70% more likely to meet or surpass revenue targets, versus peers who don't" *By Emily O'Loughlin, Kameron Kordestani, Rebecca Kaetzler and Evelyn De Blieck, published 19 February 2025. [**https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/m-and-a/our-insights/why-managing-culture-is-critical-for-value-creation-in-m-and-a**](https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/m-and-a/our-insights/why-managing-culture-is-critical-for-value-creation-in-m-and-a)