This week we continue our conversation with Paul Peterson, a managing director at Wind Point Partners. Wind Point Partners is a private equity investment firm that with a strategic focus on facilitating leadership transitions by partnering with top caliber executives to acquire middle market businesses with a clear path to value creation. Since its founding in 1984, the firm has raised over $3 billion in commitments and acquired more than 90 platform companies and 160 add-on acquisitions. Second of two parts – View part one

The Lead Left: Talk to us more about that third bucket?

Paul Peterson: Creativity creates change the market doesn’t anticipate. For example, we are in pursuit of an opportunity right now where we are paying a market clearing price for a platform within a niche industry.  On its own there are nice opportunities and we are partnered with a strong executive to take over the CEO role.  But we are also in discussion with the #2 player in the same niche and have pretty unique insight into the synergies due to our executives knowledge of the business.   Internally we call this connecting the dots, the more angles or value levers you can line up the more dots are connected and the more compelling a deal becomes.