Private Equity interview preparation

Questions

100

Traced to a firm

83

Firms

40

Updated

September 2026

Asked at

All firmsAdvent International6Apollo Global Management6Audax Group6Carlyle Group6EQT6Silver Lake6Vista Equity Partners6WPWarburg Pincus6HIH.I.G. Capital5Oaktree Capital Management5Platinum Equity5TPTPG5General Atlantic4AMAres Management3Blackstone3Clayton Dubilier and Rice3GSGuggenheim Securities3Insight Partners3Invesco3Lazard3Neuberger Berman3NUNuveen3TSTruist Securities3Bain Capital2HWHarris Williams2Kohlberg Kravis Roberts2Millennium Management2Moody's2Rothschild & Co2WBWilliam Blair2Bessemer Venture Partners1Citi1Evercore1FTFranklin Templeton1Houlihan Lokey1HPS Investment Partners1KKR1Mizuho1MSMorgan Stanley1Sycamore Partners1

Topic

All topicsLBO mechanics7Value creation5Returns2Fund economics9Investment judgement18Valuation6Firm knowledge2Credit and financing9Operations4Due diligence8Career and fit11Sector knowledge4Accounting2Deal structuring7Industry knowledge3Brainteasers3

Level

AnyCoreIntermediateHard

Type

AnyTechnicalCaseFitMarket viewBrainteaser

1. 024How do you think about customer concentration?Due diligenceIntermediatetechnicalHWHarris WilliamsInvestment Banking · Richmond · 2025

   Say this

   It is a risk you price rather than one you avoid, and the question is not the percentage but the strength of the relationship. A twenty-year sole-source relationship at 40 percent is very different from a tendered contract at 40 percent.

   Then walk it

   1. First the numbers: top customer, top five and top ten as a percentage of revenue and of gross profit. Gross profit concentration is often worse than revenue concentration and nobody looks at it.
   2. Then the relationship quality: contract length and notice period, whether you are sole source or one of several, how embedded you are in their process, and what it would cost them to switch.
   3. Then tenure and trajectory: a customer of fifteen years whose spend is growing is a very different risk from one recently won on price.
   4. Then the customer's own health, because their problems become yours. And whether they are themselves consolidating, which changes the negotiating balance.
   5. Mitigations: customer reference calls during diligence, contractual protections, price adjustments, earn-outs tied to retention, or a specific indemnity.
   6. The effect on exit matters too: concentration reduces the buyer universe and the multiple at your own exit, so you pay for it twice. That is the point most candidates miss.

   Where candidates lose it

   Treating concentration as a simple threshold. The substance is relationship durability and switching cost. And the exit-multiple consequence, that you pay for concentration again when you sell, is the sophisticated addition.

   Expect next

   • What would you ask in a customer call?
   • How would you structure around it?
   • How does it affect the exit multiple?

   Reported by candidates at Harris Williams (Investment Banking, Richmond, 2025). Source: Wall Street Oasis.

Firm tags come from public, anonymous candidate reports on Wall Street Oasis: strong signal, not sworn testimony. Firms are named as the places a question was reported, not as partners of Fin Maverick. Answers are written for this page to show how to think out loud; they are not scripts to recite.