Bo Huang joined Advent in 2016 and is a Managing Director in Boston. He advises on investments in the business & financial services sector. Bo has advised on 16 investments during his career, eight while at Advent.
Prior to joining Advent, Bo worked at Apax Partners, where he focused on investments in the technology and healthcare sectors. Before that, he worked at Lazard in mergers & acquisitions.
Bo received a BA in Economics and Biology and BAS in Biomedical Science, cum laude, from the University of Pennsylvania, and an MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
What advice would you give to a new colleague at Advent?
They should realize that it’s a collaborative culture. Counter to much of the rest of the finance world, this isn’t a star culture. Every day we collaborate across different sectors, regions, and partners. The ability to leverage the collective skill and experience set of the whole partner group is what differentiates us.
How does working with Operating Partners improve the investment process?
Our Operating Partners are industry veterans – usually former CEOs, chairmen, or C-suite executives, who have seen and done it before. We recruit them into very specific roles for their expertise, whether it’s in a particular industry vertical, or in a certain functional role. They help Advent in identifying and evaluating investments, and then in executing on the value creation plan. Oftentimes they’re not rolling up their own sleeves, but act as mentors to the people who drive the company. They know what to look out for and where the pitfalls might be, and they’ll have a rolodex of people who can add further value if needed.
What sort of companies are you looking for in your sub-sectors of focus?
Advent is looking for unique and differentiated businesses that we can support through an investment cycle. In the underwriting process, we spend a lot of time on the value creation plan, determining what we can do better, faster, or differently than the company is doing today, and whether we can quantify that into actionable levers. Crucially, we want to make sure that once Advent does make the investment, we have the resources, alignment, and focus to drive every one of those levers.
What do you find most compelling about your job?
What I love about this industry is that it’s dynamic and constantly challenging. Every single investment, every single project, every single issue is slightly different. It’s not cookie-cutter – you don’t have a standard playbook that you’ll just execute against every single time. I find the challenges exciting: trying to figure out how to solve the problems and ultimately deliver great outcomes.
If you weren’t in private equity, what would you be doing?
I would probably be making investments in some way, shape, or form. I love investing in businesses and working with them and their people to help them grow. It’s just such a rewarding process to evaluate where markets are going, discover which companies, executives, and people are set up for success, and then helping them to shape that success.
