Exactly ... PE's wants shorterm return, just numbers in a sheetbook, and they special execs for such jobs. Their only "strategy" (my dog can figure out better) is aggresive monetization, layoffs pushing remaining employees to limits. Profits goes up ... so the strategy must work, lets increase monetization more and do more layoffs.

Prices goes up, quality of service goes down. After few years, everything goes down the drain, PE and their execs can't figure out what went wrong.

In most cases you have the causal effect of PE incorrect. By the time PE comes in, the company has already peaked and is on a downslope. The original owners know this, want to get out and sell. Blaming PE is like blaming vultures for the roadkill they are picking over.

And despite their patterns giving not that great returns they keep doing it. Mostly it's an income play vs capital appreciation anyway. If you wanted the capital gains pre-seed and seed are doing well. ACA had a report which I think also got mentioned in Bloomberg.

That's an oversimplification. Private Equity's goal is to take control of the business and change it so that it has higher resell value.

Often they do sell it for parts, or they enshitify the hell out of it to squeeze revenue from loyal customers. Not necessarily because it's the optimal strategy, but because truly fixing a business is hard and these are decent shortcuts from their perspective.

But that's not a given, sometimes they do truly turn it around for the better.

It depends on the acquirer; Silver Lake could be a good partner.