Ep. 144: Alex Abell. RCP Advisors | Evaluating Lower Middle Market Managers and Operational Value Creation

On this episode, Alex Abell, Managing Partner at RCP Advisors, explains how fund of funds investors evaluate lower middle market managers—and why fund-level benchmarking alone fails to surface which GPs are genuinely creating value. Hear how deal-level data can validate or challenge the narrative a manager pitches, why a strong return in a single deal means little without peer context and how operational metrics like entry margins and revenue CAGRs reveal whether a manager is actually improving the companies it owns.

Then learn how to evaluate the operational side of a GP—from the structures firms use to deploy functional expertise across portfolio companies, to the qualitative signals that can override a strong track record.