Innovation and Private Capital x aulium
Oct 16, 2026 · 56 min · 11 segments
Why do some of the hardest private equity deals, from messy carve-outs to opaque financials, produce the best returns? Zeina Bain of Sullivan Street Capital explains how she prices complexity that…
I credit the team around me and particularly my managing partner, co-partner, Leighton, with just being lean into your own conviction.
And so I had to learn... to just be more forthright and be more self-starting and shed the corporate cowardice, you know, towing the party line, you know, saying the kind of politically correct thing and actually just lead into what I'm interested in doing and how I present myself.
People thought I was completely crazy, you know, leaving the bosom of big corporate to start something that didn't have a brand name.
It tests you a lot, takes a lot of you, but actually you put so much of yourself in it and you get out what you put in, which is the great piece of it.
And so regarding like, because it's a relationship business, I'm sure, you know, Carlyle, I mean, as you said, like big brand, probably you contact, you know, advisors and founders, CEOs of companies.
When you move to a smaller firm like Sullivan Street Partners, I mean, what happened? I mean, did you think, oh, my God, it's actually more difficult than I thought?
With the Carlisle brand and increasingly with the ICG brand, people would take that call and they would pay attention.
And give you that extra time, which they could otherwise, you know, spend on someone else.
And so it's something about pulling people into the narrative of what the firm is doing and what I'm like to deal with and building a personal relationship, which I think is different from managing upwards or playing the politics or just representing the brand in a very, you know, corporate vanilla way.
I'm sure also you realize who your true friends were at the time.
I mean, I remember when I started, when we started our first company a while ago now, I mean, we thought we know a lot of people, they are going to help us, etc.
And we realized that a lot of them were not true friends.
And some people realized themselves as being true friends.
I mean, that's my personal experience.
I don't know if you lived the same...
I credit the team around me and particularly my managing partner, co-partner, Leighton, with just being lean into your own conviction.
And so I had to learn... to just be more forthright and be more self-starting and shed the corporate cowardice, you know, towing the party line, you know, saying the kind of politically correct thing and actually just lead into what I'm interested in doing and how I present myself.
People thought I was completely crazy, you know, leaving the bosom of big corporate to start something that didn't have a brand name.
It tests you a lot, takes a lot of you, but actually you put so much of yourself in it and you get out what you put in, which is the great piece of it.
And so regarding like, because it's a relationship business, I'm sure, you know, Carlyle, I mean, as you said, like big brand, probably you contact, you know, advisors and founders, CEOs of companies.
When you move to a smaller firm like Sullivan Street Partners, I mean, what happened? I mean, did you think, oh, my God, it's actually more difficult than I thought?
With the Carlisle brand and increasingly with the ICG brand, people would take that call and they would pay attention.
And give you that extra time, which they could otherwise, you know, spend on someone else.
And so it's something about pulling people into the narrative of what the firm is doing and what I'm like to deal with and building a personal relationship, which I think is different from managing upwards or playing the politics or just representing the brand in a very, you know, corporate vanilla way.
I'm sure also you realize who your true friends were at the time.
I mean, I remember when I started, when we started our first company a while ago now, I mean, we thought we know a lot of people, they are going to help us, etc.
And we realized that a lot of them were not true friends.
And some people realized themselves as being true friends.
I mean, that's my personal experience.
I don't know if you lived the same...
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