Accounting's Inflection Point: Private Equity, AI, and the End of the Billable Hour

Accounting's Inflection Point: Private Equity, AI, and the End of the Billable Hour

Accounting has been around for five thousand years. The modern profession has been around for one hundred. And for most of that century, almost nothing about it has actually changed. Then in five years, it all moved at once. Over $200 billion of private equity capital across roughly 150 deals. Eleven of the top thirty US firms now PE-backed. AI absorbing workflows that hadn't been touched in a generation. The industry that quietly underwrites every business decision in the economy, being rebuilt in real time. In this episode of Why We Like It, Sam Tidswell-Norrish sits down with two people on opposite ends of the same grid. Frank Longobardi spent forty-five years inside the profession, the last of them as CEO of CohnReznick. He explains what private equity actually saw that the partners didn't - the capital problem, the governance trap, and the moment a generation of partners realized their equity was worth multiples of what they'd been told. Ariel Harmoko is the co-founder and CEO of Artifact, the agentic AI platform now cleared by HMRC to file tax returns directly with the regulator. A former Formula 3 driver and Cambridge machine learning researcher, he delivers one of the sharpest unscripted answers we've had on the show - on where the $900 billion value-creation story actually lives, and who really wins the next decade. Two generations. Two vantage points. One profession being re-engineered in real time.

Rewriting the Playbook: Inside Sports' Commercial Reinvention with Chris Bevilacqua & Chris Marinak

Conference realignment. The transfer portal. A $20.5M-per-school revenue-sharing mandate that didn't exist two years ago. Streaming platforms spending north of $14B on rights. Sports is being rebuilt from the ground up and on this episode, Sam talks to two people whose careers have shaped many of the defining moments along the way. Chris Bevilacqua built the proof of concept that became every conference media network you know today. Chris Marinak spent nearly two decades inside MLB, helping deliver innovations like the pitch clock and the ABS challenge system. Now both at Playfly Sports, they discuss media rights, college sports, hyper-personalization, and what fans should expect over the next five years.

The New Rules of Value Creation in Private Equity

Every year, the private equity industry gets more competitive. More capital chasing a similar supply of deals. Valuations staying firm. The arbitrages of buying low and selling high evaporating. For over a decade, outcomes were supported by multiple expansion and leverage. That era is over. Performance now depends on operational improvement and revenue growth, and the firms that can deliver real value creation are pulling away from those that cannot. In this episode of Why We Like It, Sam Tidswell-Norrish sits down with Sean Mooney, founder and CEO of BluWave. Sean is a 20-year private equity veteran who went from PE partner and investment committee member to building BluWave, a platform now trusted by hundreds of top PE firms and thousands of portfolio companies to connect investors with pre-vetted operators, consultants, and interim executives across due diligence, value creation, and exit preparation. They go deep on where firms consistently get it wrong, why people remain the single biggest lever in value creation, how revenue growth has overtaken cost cutting as the primary driver of exit valuation, and why AI is rapidly shifting from buzzword to tactical deployment. Sean shares what he calls the three board meeting problem, a pattern he sees play out across the industry, and a decision-making framework from US military doctrine that changed how he operates in uncertain environments. The conversation closes with four factors Sean believes every founder should evaluate before taking PE capital for the first time. Together, they explore why operational value creation is no longer a marketing narrative but the primary source of returns, and why the firms that run the business of private equity like a business are the ones building durable, long-term performance.

The Car Wash Industry’s Hidden Economics

The car wash industry is far larger, more sophisticated, and more structurally attractive than most people realize. In North America alone, it generates over $15 billion in annual revenue across more than 60,000 locations. What was once a transactional, cash-based business has quietly evolved into a recurring-revenue, asset-intensive consumer infrastructure platform powered by subscriptions, density economics, and operational discipline. In this episode of Why We Like It, Sam Tidswell-Norrish sits down with John Standley, CEO of Spotless Brands, and Matthew Schroeder, CFO of Spotless Brands, to unpack what it really takes to scale a car wash business from a handful of sites into a national platform. They go deep on unit economics, market density, infrastructure investment, team building, and why execution, not just growth, is what separates the winners from the rest. The conversation then broadens with Eric Wulf, CEO of the International Car Wash Association, who brings a macro lens to where the industry is heading. From subscriptions and predictive maintenance to AI, automation, robotics, and the long-term shift toward B2B and fleet washing, Eric lays out how technology and data are reshaping both the operating model and the opportunity set. Together, they explore why this sector continues to attract institutional capital, how durable returns are really built at scale, and why car wash should be viewed not as a commodity service but as a high-utilization consumer infrastructure business with long-term growth potential.

Asphalt, Infrastructure, and the Hidden Engine of the Real Economy

Infrastructure is often discussed through megaprojects and headline spending. In this episode of Why We Like It, we look beneath the surface at one of the most essential, and most underestimated, parts of the U.S. economy: asphalt. Sam is joined by Shawn Godwin, CEO, and Craig Berkey, President of Palmetto, one of the most respected paving operators in the United States. Drawing on decades of operating experience, they unpack why asphalt sits at the core of economic activity, how rising traffic volumes and heavier vehicles are accelerating wear, and why maintenance-driven demand makes this category structurally resilient. The episode also features Amy Miller, President of the Asphalt Contractors Association of Florida, who brings a policy and industry-wide perspective. Amy shares how workforce constraints, funding mechanisms, and technology adoption are shaping the future of asphalt, as well as why collaboration between operators, associations, and state agencies is critical to maintaining and improving U.S. infrastructure. Together, the conversations explore why asphalt is such a compelling lower middle market category: high fragmentation, non-discretionary demand, execution-driven margins, and long-term durability. This is an episode about the physical systems that keep the real economy moving, quietly, reliably, and at scale.