Jordan Wood

I help private equity, venture backed, and founder led companies solve critical finance hiring needs.

For more than a decade I have partnered with teams to build their Finance, Accounting, Tax, and Audit functions. From Senior Accountant through CFO. Through Artemis Professionals, a DVBE certified recruiting firm, I focus on interim, contract to hire, direct hire, and high level project consultants.

Clients call when they need help with a 90 day close cleanup, a carve out or integration, a system implementation, or their next permanent finance leader. My job is to translate the business need into a clear hiring plan and deliver professionals who get it done.

Managing Director, Professional Staffing

Founded in 1989 – Century Group is an executive services firm providing Executive Search, Interim and Project Services in Accounting, Reporting, Finance, M&A, SOX, Internal Audit, Financial Systems and Corporate Tax. The firm has been recognized as the #1 Contingency Search Firm in Los Angeles by The Los Angeles Business Journal.
http://www.century-group.com/

I've been reading through the 2026 private capital outlooks this week.

The 2021 PE cohort. Only 16.6% have exited by year four. 

The 2017 cohort at year four? 32.3% were already out.

That is half the exit rate.

These were deals done at peak valuations, peak multiples, peak everything. 

And now they're stuck in a market that looks very different from the one they underwrote.

PitchBook proposes only half of the 2021 vintage might be monetized by year ten if things do not pick up.

So what does that actually look like inside those companies? Some real examples I hear when talking to finance leaders every week:

>> The CFO still working off a model that assumed a 2023 exit. 

>> The controller juggling month-end close and data room prep for a sale that keeps slipping. 

>>The FP&A lead who has rebuilt the forecast three times this year. 

The pressure is on. 
LPs want cash back. 

McKinsey found 2.5 times as many LPs now call DPI their most critical metric compared to three years ago. 

The board call that used to be a monthly update now includes pointed questions about weekly cash. 

The QofE prep keeps getting moved up. And that model everyone signed off on last year? Now someone wants to see the backup.

But as we close out 2025, there are real reasons to feel better heading into the new year. 

The Fed has cut 100bps since September, bringing rates to 4.25%-4.5%. Deals are starting to pencil again.

For the first time since 2015, distributions actually exceeded capital contributions.

And the regulatory picture is shifting.

The FTC is easing up on serial acquirers. Prior approval requirements used to lock companies into 10 years of asking permission for future deals. Most new consent decrees may now just require notification. HSR early termination also resumed in February, giving deals a real path to speed.

The DEAL Act and ICAN Act passed committee 50-2 and cleared the full House. These reforms have real momentum heading into the Senate. If they clear, they could open up new liquidity paths for VC and smaller funds.

M&A activity is already responding. US deal volume hit $2.3 trillion this year, up 49% from 2024.

The companies who spent the last two years tightening operations are going to be the ones ready when the window opens wider. 

The ones still catching up? Interim controllers, project CFOs, deal-ready finance talent. That is how they close the gap before the window does.

2026 will not be easy. But the pieces are lining up for the teams that did the work.

As we head into the new year, what are you seeing inside your portfolio companies?

Managing Partner | Partnering with PE, VC & Family Offices on Finance & Accounting Talent | Commercial/Home Services, Real Estate, Construction, Manufacturing, CPG | DVBE-Certified

The VC model was built for 10-year fund cycles. But nearly half of unicorns have now been held for nine years or more. 

That creates a challenge.

LPs can't recycle unreceived capital.
GPs struggle raising new funds without distributions.

And since 2022, net cash flows to LPs have been negative by $169 billion, according to PitchBook's 2026 outlook.

We've seen this before.
The 2008 financial crisis created similar pressure.
IPO markets froze. Companies stayed private longer. 

Early investors and employees needed liquidity that traditional exits couldn't provide.

That's when the secondary market bloomed.

Facebook approved one of the first company-led tender offers in 2009, which helped legitimize the entire category.

By 2018, the playbook had already flipped. Companies that never considered secondaries before 2008 were now building them into their planning from the start.

So what's different this time?
Scale.

There's now $3.9 trillion in unicorn value sitting in private markets.

Goldman Sachs bought Industry Ventures.
Morgan Stanley acquired EquityZen.
Charles Schwab picked up Forge Global.

Secondaries are maturing into permanent infrastructure.

And two-thirds of unicorns that went public in 2025 priced below their private market peak.

PitchBook calls it moving past "the golden handcuffs of peak pricing."

Down rounds used to carry stigma. 
Now they're the norm.

For portfolio company finance teams, the lesson from 2008-2009 still holds.

Exit-readiness isn't a sprint before going public. 
It’s a continuous discipline across IPO, M&A, secondary, and continuation vehicles.

The companies that moved fastest after the last crisis had already built that infrastructure.

Are we solving the liquidity problem, or just institutionalizing a workaround?

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