📊 Growth Capital Podcast — Episode 96 📊

What if the biggest risk in your next deal isn't the numbers on the page, but nobody being able to prove they're right?

In this episode of the Growth Capital Podcast, host Justin Dixon sits down with Graeme Crawford, Founder & CEO of Crawford McMillan, a data consultancy that helps private equity firms move from "management-grade" data to "investor-grade" data that can stand up to real scrutiny. Graeme spent years running business intelligence at Capital One before building Crawford McMillan, and he brings a data engineer's eye to what actually happens inside a company once liquidity events and acquisitions enter the picture.

This conversation goes well beyond a typical diligence checklist. It's a look at why departments quietly "mark their own homework" on the KPIs they report upward, why a polished AI-generated dashboard can make bad data look more credible than it is, and why value creation work is increasingly happening mid-hold instead of just pre-deal.

🔍 In this episode, you'll learn:

• Why "management grade" and "investor grade" data are not the same thing
• How AI dashboards can quietly make bad numbers harder to question
• Why Crawford McMillan starts every engagement with people, not databases
• What a central data dictionary actually fixes, and why it comes first
• Why software deal volume has dropped sharply, and what that means for value creation
• Why AI can't shortcut the hard work of defining and governing your own data

Whether you're a founder preparing for diligence, a PE operator trying to reignite a stalled value creation plan, or an investor trying to separate real data rigor from a nice-looking chart, this episode offers a practical framework for knowing whether your numbers can actually be trusted.

📩 Connect with Graeme Crawford: 🌐 Website: https://crawfordmcmillan.com/ 🎙 Podcast: Private Equity Data Guy - https://crawfordmcmillan.com/podcast/ (YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts) 📬 Newsletter: Inside the Data Room - https://insidethedataroom.com/

🔔 If you found this conversation valuable, give the video a like, share it with an operator preparing for diligence, and subscribe for more in-depth conversations with the founders, investors, and operators shaping the future of business.

💬 Tell us in the comments: If someone asked you right now how you know your top-line number is correct, could you actually answer?

🏗️ Growth Capital Podcast — Episode 95 🏗️

What if the biggest bottleneck in construction isn't the job site, it's everything that happens before anyone breaks ground?

In this episode of the Growth Capital Podcast, host Justin Dixon sits down with Aurimas Sabulis, Founder & CEO of Dextall, a company redefining how prefabricated building exteriors are designed, engineered, and manufactured. After building a nationwide commercial window and exterior company from scratch, Aurimas set out to answer a question that had bothered him for years: why does an industry responsible for some of the largest capital investments on earth still design and build almost everything from scratch, on every single project?

In this conversation, you'll learn:

• Why up to 30% of materials on a traditional job site end up as construction waste
• How Dextall standardizes a building's structural "chassis" while giving architects full creative freedom on the exterior finish
• Why cost, not sustainability or quality, is the real barrier standing between prefab and mainstream adoption
• How Dextall's software, Kora, is compressing roughly a year of manual engineering work into days
• Why using existing, already-trusted skilled labor was a deliberate strategy to lower the risk of switching to prefab

Whether you're a founder building in an industry still run on manual expertise, a PE or VC investor evaluating opportunities in construction tech and PropTech, or an operator trying to find efficiency gains hiding in plain sight, this episode offers a practical look at how to bring an entrenched industry into a new model without asking customers to pay more for it.

Connect with Aurimas Sabulis and Dextall: 🌐 Website: https://www.dextall.com/ 🌐 Software: https://kora.studio/ 💼 Find Dextall on: LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/dextall/ and YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@dextall

🔔 If you found this conversation valuable, give the video a like, share it with someone building or investing in construction, real estate, or PropTech, and subscribe for more in-depth conversations with the founders, investors, and operators shaping the future of business.

💬 Tell us in the comments: Where in your own industry is everyone still "reinventing the wheel" on every project?

🧪 Growth Capital Podcast — Episode 94 🧪

What does it take to build a biotech company, sell it right before a crisis hits, and then find the motivation to start all over again?

In this episode of the Growth Capital Podcast, host Justin Dixon sits down with Tero-Pekka Alastalo, Co-founder & CEO of Avenue Biosciences, a protein engineering company re-engineering therapies to make them cheaper and faster to manufacture. An MD-PhD and trained pediatric cardiologist, Tero-Pekka's path from Stanford postdoc to founder took him through a genomics company that was sold just before COVID, a stint at the acquiring organization, and ultimately to co-found Avenue.

Key topics discussed: ● Selling a genomics startup weeks before the COVID shutdown ● Life inside an acquiring company, and knowing when it's time to leave ● How Avenue re-engineers proteins to lower manufacturing costs ● Building a platform play inside the biosimilar market ● Where AI is actually accelerating drug discovery today ● Finding the right investor niche for deep-tech biotech ● Why go-to-market, not technology, is the hardest problem to solve

🎧 Whether you're a founder weighing an exit, an operator navigating a company post-acquisition, or an investor trying to understand platform plays in biotech, this conversation offers a grounded, honest look at what building — and rebuilding — actually looks like.

📩 Connect with Tero-Pekka Alastalo: Email: tpa@avenuebiosciences.com

🌐 Learn more about Avenue Biosciences: https://www.avenuebiosciences.com/

👉 Watch now and subscribe to the channel!

💬 Tell us in the comments: Have you ever had to rebuild your motivation after a big win?