Private credit markets are regularly described as a multi-trillion dollar phenomenon, a new infrastructure of capital reshaping how businesses grow and transact. Marc Andreessen and others have made expansive claims about the size and reach of this market. FT Alphaville's analysis suggests the actual deployable pool is materially smaller than those claims imply, and that most of it flows to large, asset-heavy borrowers with predictable cash flows. If you run a £10m to £20m consulting or technology services firm and you are modelling a minority raise or a recap into your three-year plan, that gap matters.
Where private credit actually goes
The bulk of private credit activity sits in leveraged buyouts, infrastructure finance, and real asset lending. Unitranche facilities for PE-backed businesses with £50m or more of EBITDA. Direct lending to companies with hard collateral or contracted revenue at a scale that justifies the cost of underwriting. The funds raising the headlines are not hunting for a well-run £12m IT consultancy in Manchester, however attractive the margins.
That is not a criticism of your business. It is a structural fact about where large pools of capital deploy efficiently. A £500m credit fund cannot write fifty tickets of £1m each. The economics of diligence, documentation, and monitoring do not work. So the minimum ticket size at most credible private credit providers starts at a number that already exceeds the entire equity value of many firms in the £5m to £20m band.
What the mid-market actually looks like
For consulting and technology services firms at the £5m to £30m revenue mark, the realistic universe of growth capital is smaller and more specific than founders typically assume. It includes a handful of growth-equity boutiques that focus on professional services. It includes PE houses with a lower mid-market mandate, usually looking for majority control rather than minority positions. It includes a limited number of family offices with sector appetite. And it includes strategic acquirers offering partial liquidity alongside a transaction structure.
None of these are bad options. But they are not interchangeable with the broad capital availability implied by headline private credit figures, and the process of accessing them is different from what founders imagine. These are relationship-driven markets. The investor already knows the sector or already knows someone in your network. You are not posting on a platform and receiving a term sheet. You are navigating a small number of conversations, most of which will not convert, over a longer timeline than you expect.
The question is not whether capital exists. It is whether the capital that exists has appetite for your business, at your size, on terms that make the transaction worth doing.
Why consulting firms face an additional filter
Even within the realistic mid-market universe, consulting and technology services businesses face a specific underwriting challenge. Revenue is people-intensive. Margin depends on utilisation and project mix. Client concentration is common. Contracts are short-dated. There is rarely hard collateral. A lender or growth equity investor looking at your business is pricing a set of risks that are different from a SaaS business with ARR, or a manufacturer with plant and equipment securing the facility.
That does not make your firm uninvestable. It means the investors who understand your sector are the only ones who will price it correctly, and the investors who do not understand it will either pass or offer terms that price in their uncertainty. Founder-owners who approach growth capital conversations without that clarity tend to spend months in diligence with investors who were never genuinely qualified, and emerge with nothing except a disrupted management team and a cooler board room.
The firms that raise successfully are the ones that have already done the work. Revenue quality is demonstrable: a meaningful percentage of recurring or retainer revenue, client tenure, and low concentration. The management team has visible depth past the founder. EBITDA margins are at or above sector norms. The growth thesis is specific, not aspirational. And the founder has a clear view of what structure they will accept, including the degree of dilution, governance rights, and what happens at the subsequent exit.
Recaps are a transaction, not a reward
One of the more persistent assumptions we see is that a recap or minority raise is a natural next step after a period of good growth. A sort of institutional validation of the business. The firm has performed well, capital should follow performance, the founder takes some chips off the table and retains control. That framing is understandable but it mistakes the investor's logic.
An investor putting minority equity into your consulting firm is not rewarding past performance. They are buying a position in a future outcome, typically a trade sale or secondary transaction three to five years out. They will want a clear path to that outcome, governance rights that protect their position, and a valuation that reflects the risk of a minority stake in an illiquid private business. The discount applied to a minority position in a founder-controlled firm is real, and if you have not modelled it, the final terms will feel worse than the opening conversation suggested.
Founders who approach a minority raise having done the preparation get better terms, shorter processes, and fewer surprises. The preparation is not the diligence pack. It is the two years of value creation work before you open a conversation.
How to stress-test your assumptions before you start
Before you put growth capital into a strategic plan, run three checks. First, identify by name the investors in your sector who have written tickets at your size in the last three years. If you cannot name five, the market is thinner than your plan assumes. Second, model the transaction on realistic terms: a valuation range based on current EBITDA multiples for your type of business, a minority discount, and the governance package a credible investor will require. Third, map the path to their exit. If the answer depends on a strategic acquirer paying a premium in five years, test whether that acquirer exists and whether they are currently acquisitive in your space.
None of this forecloses the option. Growth capital raises do happen in this sector, and they work when the business is genuinely prepared and the founder's expectations are grounded in the actual market. The Vivero Realise Value process starts with exactly this kind of stress test, mapping the realistic investor universe against the business's current readiness, before we recommend a founder open any conversations.
The private credit headline numbers are real. The portion of that market relevant to a £15m consulting firm is a fraction of the fraction. Knowing that before you start is not pessimism. It is the only honest starting point. Call this the Capital Availability Gap: the distance between the market as described in the financial press and the market as it actually presents to your business, at your size, in your sector. Closing that gap in your thinking is the first move.
If you want to understand where your firm sits relative to the investor universe that is genuinely active in this space, the Equity Snapshot takes three minutes and gives you a benchmark against the firms that have successfully raised or transacted. Or if you are already past that stage, drop us a note and let's talk through what the process actually looks like.