I call it the Hole in the Bucket. Every portfolio company has one — and most of them are invisible until an exit process exposes them at the worst possible moment.
The three most common leaks I find in family office portfolios:
1. Leadership bandwidth compression — the CEO is doing three jobs, and the invisible one they're failing at is CEO.
2. Pricing architecture misalignment — the company has been leaving margin on the table for years because the pricing model was set in year one and never structurally revisited.
3. Governance and cap table risk — structural provisions that will surface during due diligence as price chips, not resolved risks.
I find these in 30 minutes. I fix them.