“Tiger Woods did not always win majors with ease; after his narrow victory in the 1999 PGA, he slumped and sighed as if he’d been carrying rocks uphill all afternoon.” – John Updike
A CPA firm must move many rocks that are on the path to growth. If a firm doesn’t effectively address these rocks, it will not be able to grow at a satisfactory rate. READ MORE →
After laying out major strategic priorities for how the firm can move toward its vision, the natural next step is to refine and define those plans. This is the beginning of the Implement stage, perhaps the most important stage of all.
Sal had been at Fortuna Accounting since the beginning, and Bill knew he wasn’t great at accountability. It wasn’t that Sal didn’t want things to be better; it just seemed like he would do a lot of talking without a lot of acting on the things expected of him. With all the work and hopes that had been invested into their strategic planning so far, Bill wanted to make sure it didn’t all go to waste in the execution phase.
I often know it’s time to move to the next stage when a partner anxiously asks, “How are we going to do all that?” To answer that question, we move into the Innovate stage, where we will lay out the major strategies that need to happen to make our dreams into reality. READ MORE →
While conventional wisdom tells us that better is better, it’s plain and simple nonsense when it comes to midsized CPA firms and a convenient excuse for a less than stellar growth by a firm’s partner group.
Venture capital crashes the private equity party in accounting.
Consolidation constellation: Sponsors in blue, platforms in red, targets in gold.
By CPA Trendlines Research
The CPA Trendlines CPA PE Deal Tracker™ shows the steep rise in deal flow, hitting more than 450.
Private equity’s push into accounting is entering a new and more complicated phase: platform building, sponsor recycling, technology investments, blended tax and wealth services — and now, a new pipeline of cash from venture capital.
This month’s CPA Trendlines CPA-PE Deal Tracker™ shows nine new deals in April, down from the first-quarter deal-closing frenzy but bringing the year-to-date deal count through April 30 to 78, well ahead of the 44 logged in the same window of 2025.
The broader verified dataset now includes 452 in-scope events, giving CPA Trendlines a clearer view of what private capital is doing after its first wave of accounting-firm investments.
The latest data does not show a retreat. It shows a transformation. The new gambits go well beyond roll-ups, and include service line extensions, corporate carve-outs, cross-industry tie-ups, recapitalizations, continuations and a buzzy new venture-backed startup.
World domination
The deal models are sprawling in all directions as big money battles for a dwindling number of prime firms and squeezes for synergies in the firms they’ve acquired.
In the mix, accounting is morphing from a profession into a platform. A launchpad from which to sell a growing, and traditionally conflict-laden, range of products and services. From tax planning to wealth management, from outsourced accounting systems to internal audit, and from risk management to insurance sales.
A once incongruous, even contradictory, collection of services are being acquired, aligned and advanced. The ambition is market encirclement. The impulse is world domination.
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