On November 13th, The Nicholas Center had the privilege of welcoming Akhil Remesan (MBA ’22) back to Grainger Hall for a conversation on entrepreneurship and private equity. Akhil is a Partner at Madison Lake Capital, a Madison-based private equity firm he helped found in 2021 while completing his MBA.
Akhil’s unique career path was shaped by his development of a rich understanding of finance and its impact on business. After beginning his career as an electronics engineer in India, he joined Deloitte as a business consultant in Boston and later founded his own food-ordering startup, Foodcliff. These roles sparked a keen interest and understanding of how financial decisions can drive business performance. It was this interest in finance that led him to pursue his MBA at UW-Madison in 2020 and embark on a career in private equity.
While a student at the Wisconsin School of Business, Akhil worked as an Associate with Wisconsin Investment Partners and later was connected with an executive at Borgman Capital, a fellow UW alum, introducing him to the world of private equity and eventually culminating in a summer internship with the very firm. “It’s critical that we do networking,” Akhil says, “[UW alumni] are always ready to help.”
Akhil leveraged his experience in private equity, as a consultant, and as a founder to open Madison Lake Capital in 2021, while still an MBA student, recognizing the opportunity in the market given the abundance of capital, a hunger for private investments, and sizeable deal flow from multi-generational sellers seeking exit. From fundraising to deal sourcing to managing a portfolio, Akhil discussed the challenges he faced in starting his own fund, noting his first major challenge came while wearing his cap and gown at graduation in 2022. He shared lessons from these early challenges, reminding students that when they are planning, to be very careful and always have a backup plan.
Madison Lake Capital targets lower middle market firms, 95% of which Akhil says are privately held, noting that so much of the economic activity in the Midwest is powered by these companies. Given these private businesses’ importance to the region and their founders, Akhil stressed the importance of fostering trust with management and ownership that Madison Lake will care for the business, its employees, and its other stakeholders after closing. He highlighted the critical importance of having talented and experienced people in successful business operations.
In addition to the lessons he learned during his career journey, Akhil shared with students the fundamentals of private equity, including the various types of fund structures, considerations for founding partners, the deal-making and buyout process, and the importance of fund raising and investor relations, noting that the single most important aspect of fund management is how you raise both debt and equity capital.
For those interested in private equity, Akhil recommends reading Never Split the Difference and The Art of Negotiating the Best Deal, emphasizing to students that much of the work done in business is done with others and that negotiation is an extremely useful skill to master.
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