Stephen Hoffmeister joined Advent in 2004 and is a Managing Director in Boston. He advises on investments in the industrials sector. Stephen has advised on 13 investments during his career, 12 while at Advent.
Prior to joining Advent, Stephen worked at Bain Capital, where he specialized on buyouts in several industries, including industrials and financial services. Before that, he worked at Bain & Company, a leading strategy consulting firm, in both Toronto and Sydney, advising companies in the aerospace, financial services, and telecommunications sectors.
Stephen received a BComm, First Class Honors, from Queen’s University in Canada and an MBA from Harvard Business School.
How does Advent identify interesting companies in your sector of focus?
Advent tries to find situations that match up particularly well to our capabilities. For example, I spend all my time in industrials – a sector that’s very international. One of the first things we’re thinking about is global growth and expansion: does the investment line up against the capabilities Advent has, in terms of our relationships around the world and the places where we have boots on the ground? Advent is focused on how we can differentially help companies achieve their growth ambitions.
What’s the impact of Advent’s collaborative culture in driving growth?
Advent isn’t a culture where people act alone in their sector or region. It all begins with the idea that we’re one big global team, and Advent has a real responsibility to our investors and our portfolio companies to help create value together. We’ll always do whatever we can to enable this – such as helping out a colleague from another geography, whether they want to hire someone new, look at an acquisition, or get information about a different region. We leverage our learning on a global basis, and make sure we deliver the best insights for our companies, wherever they are.
“Advent isn’t a culture where people act alone in their sector or region. It all begins with the idea that we’re one big global team.”
Stephen Hoffmeister
Managing Director, Advent
What does learning and professional development look like at Advent?
For the leaders in the organization, development of our teams involves modeling the right behavior. It means doing the things we say we should be doing, and showing how important and valuable it is to act as one team. We talk a lot internally about best practices. For example, when we get everybody together for our internal worldwide leadership meetings, we often share best practices or case studies. We don’t just look at the investments that went well, but also how we can learn from the ones that have faced challenges and how we have overcome them, which in a lot of ways are more important. When new people come in, there’s quite a bit of training on how we operate: how the firm and our investors always come first, not the dealmaker.
Can you describe a pivotal experience from your time here?
I’d look back to the first investment Advent made after I joined the firm. It was a multi-geography, multi-office deal involving a large corporate seller in South Africa. It was co-led out of London and Boston, and involved colleagues around the world. It would never have happened without that sort of collaboration: it was just too complicated for other firms. It showed how we could address complexity with the global team and resources that we had at our disposal. It was powerful for me, so early in my Advent career, to see this happen and to be a part of it. It’s something I’ve been able to emulate many times since.
What’s the best career advice you’ve received?
One thing that has helped me in my career is understanding that relationships really matter. It’s about treating our own people with respect – focusing on their wellbeing and development. It’s also about building positive relationships with executives in our chosen sectors. You might do something helpful for a CEO, and then 10 years down the road, they’re back in your life and you’re working together again on an investment opportunity. We’re in this for the long term, and we focus on doing the right things by people.
