Insights
What should a portfolio company do about AI in the first 100 days?
The first 100 days set the trajectory, and AI is now part of the value-creation plan whether or not it was in the deal thesis. The pressure is real: a board expecting a view, management with a hundred competing priorities, and a hold period measured in years rather than decades. The temptation is either to do nothing yet or to launch a sweeping transformation. Both waste the window. Use the first 100 days for a diagnosis and a few honest wins, not a moonshot.
Why the first 100 days
Attention and mandate are never higher than at the start of a hold. A new plan is expected, budget is being set, and the organisation is braced for change anyway. Spend that window on a genuine read of where AI can create value, plus a couple of visible early wins, and you set an agenda the rest of the hold can build on. Let it drift, and AI becomes a standing "we should look at that" item that gets no serious hearing again until it is too late to matter for the exit.
Don't start with a transformation
The instinct to announce an ambitious AI programme is the thing to resist. Big-bang transformations in the first quarter, before anyone understands the business's data, processes, or people, are how budget gets spent on science projects that never reach production. Start instead with a diagnosis: where does AI actually move a number here, what is the business ready for, and where are the risks. Pair that with one or two low-risk wins that prove the value is real. Credibility earned early is what funds the ambitious work later.
The 100-day arc
A workable shape trades the moonshot for momentum.
| Phase | Focus | Output |
|---|---|---|
| Weeks 1–4 | Get literate and honest | Leadership up to speed on what AI can and can't do; a baseline of where AI is already used, and where value might sit |
| Weeks 5–8 | Benchmark and govern | A read of AI maturity against the peer group; the governance and EU AI Act gaps identified; a shortlist of high-value uses |
| Weeks 9–13 | Prove and plan | One or two quick wins delivered against a baseline; a costed, board-ready roadmap for what to fund next |
The arc deliberately front-loads understanding and back-loads commitment. You reach the funding decision with evidence rather than a slide deck and a hope: a benchmark, a governance view, and a proven win.
What to put in front of the board
What an investment committee can act on is a roadmap that reads like any other value-creation lever: the value at stake, the cost to capture it, the risk (including governance and regulatory exposure), and a specific ask. A list of tools will not do the same job. Presented as a roadmap, AI competes for capital on the same terms as everything else in the plan, which is exactly where it should sit. A board funds a costed decision far more readily than an enthusiasm.
The portfolio-wide advantage
The quiet advantage for a PE firm is that the first-100-days playbook repeats. The diagnosis, the governance baseline, the benchmark, and the roadmap follow the same shape at each portfolio company, even as the answers differ. Run it once well and you have a template that turns a company-by-company scramble into an operating discipline, along with a growing view across the portfolio of where AI is creating value and where it is stalling. The compounding return sits there, not in any single tool.
The same arc at every portfolio company: literacy through to a costed, board-ready roadmap and a proven win, in six weeks. That is what Firestarter's accelerator is built for.