We formed Matters Graph™ in February of 2017 (originally as "GRAPH Strategy") - after three founders determined that their dedicated Private Equity and Corporate M&A practice (at another strategy consulting firm) was destined and better served operating as a dedicated M&A specialist Commercial Diligence firm, in and of itself, rather than operate as a practice in a generalist strategy consulting firm.
The investment case:
- Proprietary deals were becoming (and now have become) elusive
- Process windows (deals) were getting shorter due to investment banks' re-engineering to the benefit of sellers
- The Private Equity industry had more than doubled in size (e.g., ~1,300, ~4,050, ~5,900 firms in the U.S. alone in 2000, 2017, and now 2025, respectively) over a 17-year window; and investment pools were growing larger with U.S. AUM growing from ~$300 billion to ~$3 trillion from 2000 to 2017
- Making for an even larger market opportunity (for our firm)
- Intensifying competitiveness, driving up acquisition multiples, driving down win ratios, and increasing the need for better Diligence to help support investor return expectations
- Leading traditional commercial Diligence providers were getting weaker due to 1) outsized ambitions to diversify offerings; 2) the false premise that clients preferred one-stop shops over best of breed; 3) offshoring of research capabilities; 4) weakening of needed scrutinous muscles needed in CDD by starting to offer sellside assignments (in which entire teams of consultants became conditioned to positivity preferences); 5) consulting firms' subcontracting specific critical processes (e.g., hyper-dependence on expert networks—the same inputs that clients regularly get through its direct use of the tool); and 6) mergers among consultancies and the ultimate watering down of capabilities
- The growing alternatives that decision makers had and preference to disaggregate certain consulting service elements (e.g., the emerging practice of hiring an industry expert to run the course alongside the investment team as a "try before you buy" opportunity to work with a prospective CEO or Board Member, and negating the need to get that same industry expertise from the strategy consultancy
- Our learnings that operating as a CDD-specialist, with a tightly defined remit, caused rapid enhancement of capabilities (and capabilities that outshone multi-disciplinary consultancies)
- [Market] feedback highlighting the shortfalls of the traditional large consulting houses - e.g., regurgitated materials, off-scope content distant from the actual investment case, inferior insights (in no small part from the active use of expert networks, prioritizing efficiency over effectiveness), the decks are coming back whereby everything is "up and to the right," etc.
- Decision makers had a positive bias for best-of-breed and specialist
- We loved the work and had the skills
From this investment case, we were born with the high ambition to become a valued and cherished partner in commercial decision-making—driving greater investment returns for our clients.
MATTERS GRAPH™ WAS DESIGNED TO SERVE PRINCIPAL INVESTORS AND THE ASSOCIATED M&A LENDERS.
WE CHOSE THIS PATH IN 2017 BECAUSE WE FELL IN LOVE WITH THE PRINCIPAL INVESTOR MINDSET, AS DISTINGUISHED FROM PASSIVE INVESTORS, AND THEIR VALUE CREATION MANDATE.
We love how Principal Investors want to build something greater than what currently exists; they see the potential in "what is" and the greater potential to collaborate with a talented team to create returns that exceed the norm. We love their excitement and ideas, and we love being part of nurturing and pressure-testing a thesis. It's an idea, and it's intriguing and potentially rewarding, but it's full of risk and uncertainty. And we are ready to plug in.
Finding something that is undervalued is rare and often elusive. But what is not elusive—what is compelling and honest—are the ideas centered on taking an asset with greater potential and determining the right ideas to craft the asset into something of meaningfully greater commercial and enterprise value.
This exercise requires courage, excellent care, and respect for what is at stake, given that it involves spending other people's money. People [LPs and shareholders] who trust you to invest and generate a return to provide security and enhanced futures.
This is where Matters Graph plugs in to help.
Supporting instinct and base conviction with insights that create refined ideas and conviction based on sound foundations and proper evidence - not conjecture with limited genuine support disguised as conclusions.
We have a job: Discovery, Detailing, Discerning, Distilling, Deliberating, Diagnosing, Differentiating, Diligence.
Diligence the matters in a manner that proves to matter.
Along the way, we enhanced our capabilities, e.g., by applying our differentiated Commercial Diligence approach to also serve organic growth Commercial Diligence (CVG, or Commercial Value Generation) with the same rigor and Diligence that we provided for M&A. Our view is that significant commercial decisions deserve the same diligent care as inorganic efforts. And it fit our remit: helping clients maximize the return on capital.
As we approached our 10th year, we spent time with clients and asked them to share how they define our firm and to offer advice. What we heard:
- "You became known as the truth tellers - and that is what folks started to acknowledge is much more helpful."
- "You get the mandate."
- "Grow, but never change - stick to bespoke scopes and stick to developing and pressure testing the thesis."
- "We are so happy that Matters Graph is buy-side only. Compared to the other consultancies that took on sell-side VDD work 10 years ago to double their TAM, you avoided degrading the value of the work. And you maintained the skill set and culture of scrutiny, and you never lost the intent. We need you, we want you, to serve as a party that helps us avoid having regret and helps us craft the best possible business plans with these portfolio companies."
- "Your work has become integral to our decision making, and unlike the others, we no longer use Diligence to help stuff sail through committee. You made it [CDD] matter far more."
We were clearly onto something, and we learned that our success and the brand we had built were far more a result of what we were than the name we had given ourselves in 2017.
And with that, we decided to change our name as we plan our second decade, from our original name of 2017—GRAPH Strategy—to our new (as of October 1, 2025) and forever name: Matters Graph. We continue to serve the community and the process we love. In our name, we put what matters (your matters) at the forefront (i.e., literally in front) of Graph, serving as a reminder of why we exist and what we need to do: to make it matter.
We look forward to serving, and close with our very first message as founders in 2017:
