IAM2551 – Data Consultancy CEO Helps Equity Firms with Data-Driven Insights and Solutions

Anush Newman is the CEO and co-founder of JMAN Group, a leading data consultancy that specializes in empowering private equity firms and their portfolio companies with data-driven insights and solutions.

Founded in 2010, JMAN Group now serves over 88 private equity funds and 152 portfolio companies across 38 countries, with a team of more than 300 consultants.

Anush emphasizes the firm's unique ability to integrate disparate data sources into unified, actionable systems, setting a strong foundation for advanced analytics and AI tools.

He shares that success comes not just from strategic decisions but also from being financially aware, clear on what sets your business apart, and emotionally anchored through family and balance.

Website: JMAN Group

LinkedIn: Anush Newman

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Transcription:

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Anush Newman Teaser 00:00

We're a data analytics engineering consultancy, but focus on the private equity industry. So, we do work for non-PE back clients, but that's everything we do is set up to work for them.

So, we work for the funds themselves, and they're helping them when they're thinking about how do they use data to make better investment decisions, whether it's on deals or finding deals or finding companies or thinking about what does AI and things mean for them.

Intro 00:31

Are you ready to hear business stories and learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and level up your business from awesome CEOs, entrepreneurs, and founders without listening to a long, long, long interview?

If so, you've come to the right place. Gresh values your time and is ready to share with you the valuable info you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO Podcast.

Gresham Harkless 00:58

Hello, hello, hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO Podcast. And I have an awesome guest on the show today. I have Anush Newman. Anush, excited to have you on the show.

Anush Newman 01:06

Thank you for having me. Great to be here.

Gresham Harkless 01:08

Yes, definitely excited to have you on and talk about all the awesome things that you're doing. And of course, before we do that, I want to read a little bit more about Anush so you can hear about some of those awesome things.

And Anush is the CEO and co-founder of JMAN Group. As our next podcast guest, for our reference, JMAN Group is an internationally commercially focused data consultancy with a primary focus on the private equity industry.

Forbes recognized JMAN Group as one of the world's best management consulting firms in 2024 and was recognized as one of The Times' top 100 fastest-growing companies with an annual growth rate of 80%.

It was founded in 2010, and JMAN Group now has offices in New York, London, and a team of over 300 consultants.

And one of the things I read about before we popped on this is that he leads the firm's business strategy, and he's played a pivotal role in driving JMAN's expansion into the private equity sector, where the company now delivers data to 88 private equity funds and 152 portfolio companies across 38 different countries.

And one of the things I really loved as I was listening to one of his interviews is I'm a big believer in like alchemy and being able to take lemons and turn them into lemonade.

And I really hope that we could kind of touch a little bit upon that broken Excel spreadsheet and how that led to all the awesome things that he's doing now.

So Anush, excited to have you on the show. Are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

Anush Newman 02:29

Absolutely. Looking forward to it.

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Gresham Harkless 02:31

Awesome. Let's get it started then. So, to kind of kick everything off, let's rewind the clock, hear a little bit more on how you got started, what I call your CEO story.

Anush Newman 02:38

Yeah, I think you mentioned the Excel spreadsheet. So, my background is fairly classical, certainly for someone from the UK.

I was a chemistry major, then I didn't want to do chemistry. I didn't know what to do, so I went into consulting. It's consulting, banking, and lawyers. So, consulting is all I went into.

I ended up working for a firm called Arthur D. Little, originally from Boston, but obviously had a London office, and spent sort of four to five years in the oil and gas sector.

So, I travel around the world. There was lots of interesting work, but I'd had enough and didn't know what to do next. So, I just started freelancing.

So, this is 2010, and that's how the company itself started, just as a vehicle for me to freelance and pay some bills.

In parallel to that, my cousin Leo, who's my co-founder, he's a software engineer, a little bit older than me. We're very, very close.

He's basically like a big brother as opposed to a cousin. But he worked in the US for a long time. He worked in Silicon Valley in the sort of 90s and noughties.

We tried lots of different things. The DNA, I suppose, of the business is how can we solve commercial problems that a consultant might get, but with tech, by working together, being next to each other.

But actually explaining what problem we're trying to solve, him understanding this is part of the possible and how you could solve it by doing it together.

We achieved some great outcomes for our client really, really quickly. And that's when we sort of got into what was then called big data.

And then now it's just data. And yeah, we grew from there. We thought this is something worth exploring.

How do we do it? I was still contracting at the time and doing this side by side. But a couple of years later, we said, right, let's try and do it properly. And that's when I started to try and sell work.

So, I was trying to hire people. And I suppose the start of the business. So yeah, that was probably 2015, 2016. So, it's been quite an interesting ride since then.

And as I said, it went out to 450 people over three countries and have gone on quite a journey. So, it's definitely had ups and downs, but it's not been dealt.

Gresham Harkless 04:48

Yeah, absolutely. It never is a dull journey. And so, I know we touched on a little bit, but we'd love to drill down a little bit more to hear a little bit more on how you're working with and serving your clients.

Anush Newman 04:56

We're a data analytics engineering consultancy, but focus on the private equity industry. So, we do work for non-PE back clients.

We work for the funds themselves, and they're helping them when they're thinking about how do they use data to make better investment decisions, whether it's on deals, or finding deals, or planning companies, or thinking about what does AI and things mean for them?

Should they have a data team? So, we do. But it's probably got the 15% of our work is there.

The bulk of our work is then for the companies that they invest in. So, after they've done a deal and bought a company, or invested in a company.

And we pride ourselves on being able to work across the timeline from when they buy them to when they then sell them. There are three phases.

There's the first 100 days, the post-deal, we pull the company out, let's get set up, and what are we doing.

Then there's the middle bit, which is the right, we're going to grow the company, value creation, that's what it really grows.

And then the end, which is not really it, but it's how do we get this company ready for the next investor or something to the strategic buyer.

And data is like a key thread through all of that if you're trying to report the business based on information you've seen it. How can I report on this?

Or actually, how do I make sure I've got a really good understanding of the baseline of the business? Where is it today?

All the metrics I need to be looking at. And normally, so making it tangible, and in that first 100 days, the infrastructure of the business is generated.

There's systems everywhere, spreadsheets everywhere. If they've grown really quickly, they might have gone through lots of M&A, lots of different entities bolted on.

I find it really hard to even count their customers or kind of what is my revenue and all these things.

So, our job is to work at the starting point. We work with the investors, with the management team, and go, what are you really trying to measure? What's your investment thesis?

And then actually we will go and find the data, clean it, sort it, work with the logic, define what we need to do, not just do the analysis, then build the infrastructure to automate the reporting and the build.

So, we will wire up everything, and we'll say, look, you've got 19 different systems, but you don't have to replace them.

We'll stitch them together, build the data model, the data warehouses, and give them a tool that they can use to do their reporting. Step two is then they go, all right, this is great.

Now we've got everything. Now we want to think, how do we grow? So usually it's, if you think about tech businesses or services businesses, the lead, the general, the levers that they pull for growth are quite similar to each other. It's like, right, we want to get more customers.

We want to get them as efficiently and as cheaply as we can. We then want to make sure that we are selling all of our products, so cross-selling and upselling to them.

And we do, we help build tools, advanced analytics, machine learning, AI tools to help teams do that. There are lots of different use cases as well. Once you've got the foundation, we can then build the cool stuff.

Gresham Harkless 08:06

Yeah, absolutely. No, I appreciate you breaking that down. And you might have already touched on this, but I almost wonder if that is that secret sauce that you kind of talked about, is really understanding that human part.

Anush Newman 08:17

Oh, 100%. I think the human, yes. Look, we work with people. We build tech and all these things.

Yes, but we're trying to solve a problem. And actually, you've got to remember, the firms that we're working with they are management teams who've been invested in and are going on a potentially life-changing journey.

The aim is to make management teams have a really successful outcome and kind of life-changing outcomes for some people. So, things can go wrong.

It can be quite messy. And you have to have a lot of empathy with the clients when they're like, I'm under pressure, I need this, where is it? So that's one. And as I said, what problem are they really trying to solve?

And making sure you always come back to that. And I think a lot of our references and referrals have been, these are good people to work with, and you can trust them.

And whatever happens, they got your back, they won't let you down. So that, for me, is that human bit being a partner is absolutely critical to what we do.

Gresham Harkless 09:17

Yeah, absolutely. So, I wanted to switch gears a little bit, and I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO hack.

So, this could be like an app, a book, or even a habit that you have, but what's something you lean on that makes you more effective and efficient?

Anush Newman 09:30

I think I'm always learning about this stuff, because I think one thing I would say, preface it, I will answer, but is that I've mentioned entrepreneurs and founders.

It's a jump going from founder to CEO, especially if you take investment or whatever, and you have a board now and all the rest of it.

In many ways, my life is the same, but in many ways, it's very, very different. So, I think kind of It's hard, but again, that's part of the fun.

I would say the one thing that has stayed constant through that, my personal life hack is wonderful wife who's incredibly supportive, and whether we've done really well or done really badly, she still doesn't really care.

It's still the same as home. My kids, I have three children now, so I've got a 10-year-old, an 8-year-old, and an 8-month-old, time speaking. So, they don't really care. But I try and work my life around them as they've grown up.

Initially, it was the start of the business as opposed to me contracting was, can I make it home for bath time? If I'm contracting, I'm always at the best of someone else. I'm always on someone else's dime. So I want to have that control.

Gresham Harkless 10:55

Yeah, absolutely. I love those hacks. And so, you might have already touched on this, but I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO nugget.

A little bit more word of wisdom or piece of advice. I like to say it might be something if you were to hop into a time machine, you might be able to tell your younger business self.

It might be during one of those challenging moments as well too. Or it might be something you would tell your favorite client.

Anush Newman 11:15

I would say two things. Absolutely, keep an eye and grip on your cash would be number one. I think kind of whatever business you have.

Number two, I would say that whenever you go through any big change, I'm speaking of sample size of one, so this is just my own personal view.

But I think if you want to go through investment or you go through a step change, where you're going to a new market or something, your strengths, what's got you here, if you've grown, if you've gone from one to 10 to 20 to 100 to whatever, people.

And if you're going to hire anyone to help you, I'd say they should look at your weaknesses and where, but the core of it should be what are you really good at? What are your real strengths? How do you double down on those?

Yes, there's going to be weaknesses, but you don't want to invest in like, renewing your weakness. It's your race. You've done this. What are you really good at?

If someone is backing you or you're backing yourself to go further, then you should at least have a very good idea of what that is and have it in writing.

So, I'd say have an iron grip on your cash and have an iron grip on what you're really good at and what you want to scale. But those would be my two tips.

Gresham Harkless 12:58

Nice. I love both of those nuggets. So, I wanted to ask you now one of my absolute favorite questions, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO.

Our goal is to have different quote-unquote CEOs on the show. So Anush, what does being a CEO mean to you?

Anush Newman 13:10

It basically means looking after our people, like our top talent and clients, including key clients and helping. I think, kind of in a nutshell, it's that obviously we have with a board to manage and so on.

But I think it's to make sure we are setting our team up for success. Managing, giving, holding them accountable to things, but giving them what they need to be successful.

Again, that's been a real learning, because obviously, historically, the founder, you do a lot of this stuff, you do a lot of stuff.

Now it's like, now I've got to set them up to go and do it and not meddle. But also have very clear accountabilities so that you can have good conversations and say you've smashed it really great, I can see the results and get promoted or hit the pay rise or whatever.

Or it's not working, it's very clear you're not doing what you're supposed to, I can see it, however you want to measure it.

But actually designing that, setting that up, implementing it, and I think that's a big one, and setting that team up for success, protecting them from things like clients or board, so they don't have to worry about these things, and they can get on with executing and delivering what we need to from them.

But I also, and this was with my co-founder as well, I think, for a slightly overused word. We have these values that we've had for seven or eight years, and even when we've grown by more than 10 times in that space, we've kept them the same.

So how do you keep them the same, and how do they evolve? How do you make sure everyone knows what they are as the business grows in the direction, make sure everyone knows what their role is, helping them do it, and make sure from a cultural perspective we do it in the right way.

I think that's my job. I'm still figuring out how to do it, but kind of. And so, I think that's what it means to me.

Gresham Harkless 15:42

Yeah, absolutely. Anush, truly appreciate that. Of course, I appreciate your time even more. So, what I want to do now is pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional that you can let our readers and listeners know.

And of course, how best people can get out of you, your team, and find out about all the awesome things you're working on.

Anush Newman 15:57

Anyone can always get in touch with us in any way. Obviously, we have a website, jmangroup.com, contact page there. I'm on LinkedIn. Anyone can see my details, so please reach out to me if there's anything I can do.

Gresham Harkless 16:09

Absolutely. I love that annotation. Of course, to make it even easier, we're going to have the links and information in the show notes as well, too, so everybody can follow up and connect with you, and I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

Anush Newman 16:18

Thank you, Gresh.  Thanks for having me.

Outro 16:21

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by CB Nation and Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co. I AM CEO is not just a phrase; it's a community.

Check out the latest and greatest apps, books, and habits to level up your business at CEOhacks.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless Jr. Thank you for listening.

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