How Top Talent & Consumer Trends Drive $1.3B Growth With William Quartner

🔹 Episode Overview:
In this episode, we’re joined by William Quartner, Partner at Prelude Growth Partners, a New York-based private equity firm dedicated to the high-growth consumer space. William shares insights from his impressive journey through investment banking and private equity at firms like Goldman Sachs and TowerBrook Capital, to now helping build Prelude Growth from its inception to the recent close of Fund III. He explores critical investment lessons, the importance of talent, consumer industry trends, and the real-life challenges and rewards of building a PE firm from the ground up.

00:00 – Intro to William Quartner  & Prelude Growth Partners

• William’s background: Goldman Sachs, TowerBrook, and JP Morgan
• Prelude’s focus: high-growth consumer sectors like beauty, health & wellness, pet, baby, and food/beverage
• Just closed Fund III – now managing $1.3B in AUM

02:24 – Common Mistakes in PE & Consumer Investing

• Misunderstanding the type of risk (product, category, brand, execution)
• Lack of clarity on risk-return profile per category
• Undervaluing the importance of top-tier talent in portfolio companies

05:18 – Evaluating Talent and Leadership

• Differences between a great founder/CEO and an average one
• Importance of building the right team early
• Partnership model: working closely with founders as a minority investor

07:41 – Passion for the Consumer Industry

• How deep focus and passion improve investment intuition
• Recognizing industry "tourists" vs committed insiders
• Benefits of building a tight, focused ecosystem

09:39 – Lessons from Goldman Sachs & TowerBrook

• Seeing institutional rigor and process
• Learning high-standard due diligence and underwriting
• Wanting to work up the risk curve and help build something from scratch

11:29 – The Startup Journey of Prelude Growth

• From $85M in Fund I (2018) to $600M in Fund III (2025)
• Early-stage scrappiness and challenges
• Most rewarding part: building a recognized brand and seeing portfolio companies become category leaders

16:55 – Current Consumer Industry Trends & Outlook

• Growth brands more insulated from macro headwinds
• Tariff uncertainty and its impact on planning
• Strategic reshuffling by large CPG players creating investment opportunities
• Concerns around consumer debt and buy-now-pay-later risks
• LP skepticism toward consumer-focused funds, but Prelude bucks the trend

20:35 – Content Recommendations

• Podcasts: Pivot (Kara Swisher & Scott Galloway), Acquired, SmartLess
• Business newsletters: Axios Pro Rata, Term Sheet
• Substack content for niche consumer insights

21:32 – How to Connect with William
📧 Email: will@preludegrowth.com

🔚 Closing Thoughts:
William offers a masterclass in consumer investing; from risk frameworks and talent strategy to fundraising and sector specialization. His journey from major institutions to entrepreneurial investing highlights the power of clarity, conviction, and cultural fit in PE.

🔗 Connect with Alex Rawlings on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexrawlings/
🌐 Visit Raw Selection: www.raw-selection.com

 Looking to grow your team? Check out our Hiring Guides

 for proven strategies, templates, and best practices to make smarter hires. 

Transcript

00:00
Joining us today, William Corner, partner of Prelude Growth Partners, a New York located private equity firm investing in the consumer industry.  William's going to give us his insight into working at Goldman Sachs,  Towerbrook and private equity, and then transitioning to his recent  joining us  on the number one fund on the close of that  running right through the recent close of fund number three.  Let's dive into his journey.

00:28
William, so you can share with us a brief insight into you, Sure. Good to be here today. Excited to be on the pod. I'm regular listener and you guys have great guests. So I'm flattered to be the interviewer today. But I'm a partner at a firm here in New York called Prelude Growth Partners. Been around since 2018. We are a private equity fund. We focus entirely in the high growth consumer space.

00:59
Mostly focusing across food and beverage, beauty, health and wellness, pet, baby,  and increasingly consumer services and other four wall business models, but always with a consumer orientation. m We make a couple of investments a year,  very concentrated or high sort of conviction model. um We're just wrapping up the, the, the investing out of our second fund.  And uh actually it caught me on a good, a good week here, Alex, we announced the close of our third fund.

01:28
Um, which we're all very excited about. um and that's about it. I've been at the firm a prelude since inception,  um, back in 2018, my background, they joined from Goldman Sachs where I was in what's called the principal investment area doing, um, private equity investing into consumer retail businesses.  guess in a different part of their life cycle, much later, more traditional LPO, private equity style investing. Um, prior to that, spent some time at tower brook capital,  um, in the private equity.

01:58
business and started my career as an analyst  in the M &A group at JP Morgan.  live in New York and have a wife and two kids and excited to chat.  Thank you for that insight. Thank you for being a listener and congratulations on your recent fundraise. What's one mistake that you see either private equity firms or portfolio companies making and what would you suggest to correct them?

02:24
Huh, well, it started off easy. You know, I think I can only speak for ourselves. And I think there's two things I'd mention upfront, or maybe three. I'll think of more problems or issues people may, because we all want to be sure. But we'd like to think about the types of risks that we're taking as we underwrite or assess an investment decision in front of us. And so in the context of

02:50
consumer investing, we like to think about, we taking product risk? Are we taking category risk? Are we taking brand risk? And those aren't risks we like to take, meaning we like to be able to identify and see that those dimensions of a business or opportunity are really strong. Is there execution risk, you know, in terms of, okay, they've got all these things, but now the team has to go out and execute X, Y, and Z to achieve their potential. And that's the type of risk I think we're more eager to take because we think we can help

03:19
and sort of address that risk  with various value libraries post-close. And so I think a lot of people make the mistake of not correctly identifying the risks they're taking or underwriting against as they think about the investment decisions they're making. And that can lead to, I think,  adverse outcomes in many situations or focusing on the wrong things.  I think relatedly,  and this is very sort of academic, but I think an understanding of the right risk return

03:48
model that you're playing for, whether you're a venture investor, a private equity investor, a growth investor, or an operator. think an example that I think about a lot is within consumer brands, and that's just my universe, so it's easier for me, the risk return of an investment in one category can be very different from the risk return of an investment in another category. whether you're investing in a beverage brand,

04:17
which tends to have more venture style type outcomes, know, lots and lots of investment needed. A few companies have successful outcomes, but they tend to be very, very big outcomes, billion, two billion plus. Um, but the vast majority of the businesses, you know, fall to zero. So that's a different risk return in my view than, you know, a typical food or beauty business where there are not necessarily the same  law of large number of venture style outcomes. And you can underwrite to a more reasonable return. It changes how you approach. And so I think having.

04:47
distillation or a generalized view of the risk return and model you best suited for is helpful. um And I think under appreciating the importance of talent, both  at  the company you're investing in and your own team, but  time and time again, having a founder or CEO who uh is A plus and will run through walls is the most important thing and uh never forgetting to sort of appreciate that is a mistake.

05:18
I mean, I would say, but I think most people under-appreciate the importance of that, try and hold onto the right person.  What have you created for you that begins to make you think, A, have we got the right person, and then B, when to make a change? Have you kind of created anything in your own head to accelerate the  procrastination period that we all hold onto in love and dear? I don't need any...

05:44
tips or tricks to accelerate procrastination. Unfortunately, that comes to me very naturally. I'm sorry to say, but um now I think we think a lot about talent and we think a lot about  I'll I probably I probably bucket talent and the founder slash CEO into two separate sort of exercises. We're very focused on who we're partnering with our DNA at Prelude Growth is we are almost always a  minor. This is the significant minority partner of a of a business that is

06:12
in the growth part of its life cycle. And so what that means is we're partnering with the founder or the CEO and working together and we have to sort of believe in one another. And it's a different dynamic than, you know, a control as action where you, you're sort of, may feel like a partner, but ultimately the sperm that binds a company is the ultimate sort of decider here. We're truly partnering in most cases. And so we think a lot about the founder and the CEO. Are they passionate? Are they authentic? Do they?

06:41
They demonstrate it sort of that they will run through walls and that they can  they have to persevere and I will tell you  in my experience we've made 16 investments  at Praline Grill so far. It's pretty clear you know when you invest in a founder or CEO who is the right one versus not the right one the differences they're clear they run they do run through walls and it makes a big difference. So that's one thing on the talent that I mean more building a team around that.

07:10
founder and CEO early that is uh great and can help them execute on whatever the plan is out ahead of them. I think as we look back at our portfolio, the companies where we've built the team early and well em have generally yielded  the best outcomes. em You've calibrated and be thoughtful, but uh holding out for  the right team additions generally doesn't  create better companies in our view.

07:41
Makes sense. So you're, you we spoke prior to going live on the podcast and identified your passion for the consumer industry and your absolute love for the space. Why do you feel that that's  kind of important or contributed to your success as an investor? Well,  I hope it's contributed to my success as an investor. don't, I guess I'd have to ask other people, but I think  it's probably the same in consumer as in any other industry. But at least if you, for me, when you're in consumer,

08:11
in the consumer space broadly, it's, if you let it and breathe it and you truly do sort of spend your time where you would be spending it, if not, you know, at work otherwise, I think it becomes to come through. It really does become apparent quite quickly, you know,  across building relationships in the ecosystem,  across just knowing the nuances and the  intricacies of the brands, of the products, of the retailers, all these things, having an intuition that you can develop, you know, thinking about these things  in the shower, so to speak.

08:41
You know, when you interact with founders or you interact with other stakeholders in a business or in the space, I can tell you  very quickly whether or not they spend their  majority of their time in consumer or CPG or whether or not they're sort of a tourist because, you know, and that may be good and bad. You know, we tend to perhaps have tunnel vision about certain things. You know, if you're always a hammer, you're looking at everything as a nail, it's not good. But at the same time,

09:09
We have such a refined heuristic for what does great look like? What are the opportunities we're going to run hard at? And then how do we build those businesses correctly to make them  as valuable as we can? And who do we know along the way that can help us do that? We have, I think a pretty good flywheel, given how focused and passionate we are about the  space that we're playing in. Makes sense. Makes sense. um So you've worked, as you referenced in your intro, you've worked  at Goldman Sachs, you've also worked at Towerbrook.

09:39
Obviously larger firms than your current business. What did you learn from working for such kind of large branded private equity firms? Yeah, mean, incredible experiences. Those are both  amazing institutions, clearly. think,  I  guess the first thing I would say is  there's lots of different ways to invest successfully, you know, and  there isn't really a merit badge for doing it one way or another. I'm currently doing a growth equity style of investing within a,

10:08
particular sector, which I find to be the most exciting and rewarding  and style I've  sort of encountered so far, but that's more of a preference. think at Goldman and Towerbrook, they got to see, I think, what uh great or what's scaled, institutionalized looks like. know, there were really smart people with processes that had been refined and honed. And even Towerbrook and Goldman are very different parts of their life cycle.

10:34
Goldman Sachs is extremely institutionalized, part of a much larger business. For better or worse, lots of advantages to being part of that platform and lots of sort of things that slow you down because of red tape and things you can can't do, conflicts, so on and so forth. think at TauRook, um I learned, and in Billy Faces, actually, I should say, I learned how to do proper  private equity, diligence, and underwriting.  Both of those firms have had

11:03
great success and so that  to be taught how to do it right  has been helpful for me because almost all the deal work, regardless of the scale of the investing you're doing, is pretty much that you're doing the same commercial diligence, financial diligence,  underwriting the same, you to figure out all the same risks. so doing it, learning how to do it the right way and then being able to translate that elsewhere has been  valuable for me. um

11:29
And I think I learned that I wanted to do something a little more up the risk curve.  it was, you could be sort of an entrepreneur, quote unquote, in bigger places like that. But I, I found that I was better suited to be somewhere where I help build something from the ground up.  So to interrupt, just a quick mention of a longstanding partnership with Grata. As you all probably know, the private equity scene is constantly evolving and DealFlow is moving now to proprietary and data-driven processes.

11:59
Grata provides you with the data and information of over 7 million private companies. So if you're looking to improve your proprietary deal flow and improve the data access, then reach out to Grata today. Now back to the podcast. And you mentioned about learning the right way to do, you perceive investing, as you said, there's also different ways, but was there anything that you felt that those particular firms gave you a particular, whether it be their high standard of a certain process or...

12:29
Any other elements that you felt, yeah, do you know what that Towerbrook way was really good for just kind of honing that particular skill set. Um, so I think there's a lot of low-bend and market funds are interested to see what these big guys are doing. Um, obviously and producing massive success clearly. Yeah. mean, it's been, so it'll have been, you know, 10, 15 years since I was at Towerbrook, but you know, Towerbrook is a very distinctive investment style. They don't participate in auctions. They're very, um,

12:59
that know growth oriented  value but growthy they like to hang around the hoop and sort of things with complications or hair it's sort of they they're thoughtful and they're persistent and they find I think good opportunities when they navigate complexity and  do their work well and they and also generalists so they work across different industries which is another thing where you know prairie wood growth is consumer only. Talbot and Goldman are both you know they have

13:27
teams that focus in each industry, but the firms are  multi-industry. And so I think,  you know,  they have a bit more of a framework that's generic to investing, less a framework that's specific to consumer, um which  was helpful for me to develop, whether it's, what makes a good business, what is the, they also use leverage, and then we use lab. So there was different attributes that certainly I took with me.  It's hard to say.

13:58
beyond that though, to honest.  Appreciate that. So you referenced that  Prado has just  closed yet another fund.  You joined at the  close of the first fund. You've just closed fund three. Tell us about that kind of journey so far. What has been kind of the most rewarding parts for you, but equally what you have done differently at fund one from what you've learned during that journey to fund three. Yeah. No, thank you. I mean, it's been an incredible journey. we

14:28
first fund was an $85 million fund that we closed in 2018. We just now closed a $600 million fund. We've bought our total AUM to a $1.3 billion. We've had the benefit of partnering with a bunch of really amazing companies along the way and we've had some successful exits. We've had, you know, portfolio, whether for luck or just hard work has been a really great group of performing companies. So.

14:58
I think for me, um as I think back, it's like a classic entrepreneurial um observation that like if you knew what you were getting into, you may not have done in the first place. know,  being at a first time fund is certainly a startup in its own right, you know, so you don't have a reputation, you don't have uh a support function of  any kind. And I joined and the two founders of the firm um were two incredible partners.

15:27
One of them came from El Catterton, another was an  operator at J &J and Estee Lauder within sort of the consumer space. And so they were incredible mentors to me and they brought to bear lots of great industry relationships and expertise.  But the journey was not always up to the right smoothly. You certainly there's, you're working hard, everyone has to be scrappy. You're always pushing the ball forward. It's exhausting in a different way than a typical private equity day job is. uh

15:57
You're just, you're always busy and it's highly accountable. And so for me, the most rewarding part to answer your question has been I think seeing the platform of prelude growth, you know, build. we have, you know, a team we have, I think within our consumer space, people are aware and they know the brand prelude growth and we have sold some companies, seeing our companies grow to become category leaders like we hope they would be. And that's really rewarding as well. um

16:26
And if I'd started fund one now, don't, you know, I don't even want to go there. I don't know what I would have done differently, but I'm sure there would have been one or two things, but I'm happy where we ended up. So. I think it's about going on a journey. So I think that the main frame is that you now better the prospects, potential investment firms, your potential investment opportunities are now better known and aware of you guys. And that's obviously making each of the journey a little bit easier as you go on with your next.

16:55
uh, next investments. Yeah, absolutely. What, what's your take on the, I mean, there's lots of different facets to consumer and it's, it's quite a broad industry. If we encapsulate everything within the consumer world, what's your take on the consumer industry currently and what's happening and from what you're seeing from both your portfolio and the, and the firms you're dealing with or trying to invest in. Yeah. I mean, it's a certainly dynamic space. It really does depend who you ask when you ask it and what part of it you're looking at. mean,

17:24
We play in the growth brand arena, which uh I think by and large is more insulated than the broader consumers face because these tend to be growth brands by definition. So our portfolio has been uh very healthy, growing rapidly, expanding profitability. And that's just because  the brands that we partner with, ideally, they are certainly subject to  macro and existential sort of movements. But these are brands that are

17:54
typically able to grow through that  sort of turbulence. I think more broadly though, like in consumer, the space, like there's tariff noise that is really disruptive and makes planning for businesses and purchasing for consumers really difficult. know, supply chains are disrupted. think it's just a very, having clarity around these tariffs is incredibly important for every element and down the sort of supply chain of consumer.

18:22
Um, I think there is a lot of both, both consolidation and divesting happening and like sort of the broad, the bigger public strategic acquirer universe of CPG. So lots of these big  Kellogg and,  um, you name it, all these general, all these big sort of traditional CPGs are sort of reallocating assets, thinking about what their pro for our best sort of streamlined.

18:51
portfolio brands should be and that creates opportunities as well. And the consumer is, well we can tell the consumer is actually healthy. I think there's some percolating concerns. I've always thought the buy now pay later stuff in terms of not being included in credit scores was just, you know,  was just uh a fantasy. don't know, I don't understand, never understood why that was not considered to be part of the consumer's credit risk. I don't quite understand why that was perceived to be any different than credit card debt, but I that will unfortunately probably create some

19:21
disruption when that comes home to roost. But otherwise, we're seeing healthy consumer on the investing side. think the general scuttlebutt that I hear, and this is just what comes back to me, is I think obviously private equity investing into consumer is a bit out of vogue. It's been difficult for a number of larger firms to make returns in the space. I think LPs have tended to shy away from backing consumer-focused funds broadly, not

19:51
not in general, all, but just generically consumer focused funds have received less LP investment is my understanding. think thankfully we were able to close our fund very quickly. We two month fundraise, existing LPs re-upped for the most part, added a select few and we're thrilled, but it's sort of been a pullback relative to the COVID time where there was a lot of tourist capital coming in and out. I people have sort of taken a step back a little bit.

20:21
Not if that's helpful, but I'm happy to be a consumer and ah the water is warm. More people should come join.  What do you read, watch, listen to that you recommend that others should check out?

20:35
Um, some of it's related to work. Some of it's most of it's not. I'm the big podcast guy. Um, so of course the private property podcast, you know, subscribe right there. Um, I love, I love pivot with Scott Galloway and cares wish or the name of Scott Galloway is a really thoughtful guy. love the acquired podcast when that comes out, it's an immediate listen for me. I think that's an absolute gem. There's some episodes that they've done that are just so interesting. know, Mars, Costco.

21:03
highly recommend that for those that are interested in business history. Smart List is a really good sort of change of pace, sort of like a more comedic sort of show business podcast I love. Newsletters and sort of in my email I read the typical stuff, know, Axios Pro Rata term sheet, lot of consumer specific things. There's a lot of really good consumer industry, know, sub-stack content out there. Always looking for the next great TV show, so.

21:32
open to any suggestions, but that's probably it. Well, that'd be no good for you there. Oh yeah. I'm just sitting on my laptop all day, selling no good recommendations for TV. If somebody wants to reach out to you, William, how best do they get in touch, My email, will at preludegrowth.com would love to chat. Please reach out. Perfect. Well, thank you very much for coming onto the Private Equity podcast, giving us your insights to your journey in private equity, but also the journey that you've been through with Prelude on their fund raise.

22:01
and the insights of consumer industry. So thank you very much for coming on. Thanks for having me. And as always, thank you very much for everybody for tuning into the PrivateXE podcast. If you haven't done so already, please do follow William, subscribe to the podcast, and tune in every single week. But till the next time, keep smashing it, and thank you very much for listening.