consultance.ai · the finance operating system

The KKR-Style Guide to Claude

The private equity diligence and deal operating system. The judgment a deal team runs on every target, the prompts that run it on your own data, and the live calculators behind the numbers.
Screen → Model → Diligence → Decide → Monitor

Everyone is shipping "360 prompts" guides. A prompt is not the job. The job is the judgment — which risk kills the deal, which number is a lie, when to walk. This guide is built around the calls a partner makes, not the keystrokes an analyst types. Every lane runs on your own data, in your own Claude. Your deal never leaves your tenant.

Two of these lanes ship a real working calculator, not a screenshot. Move an assumption and watch the return or the covenant break in front of you. That is the difference between a guide and a brochure.

The 8 lanes

  1. Screen the deal before the data room
  2. Build the LBO and read the return
  3. Quality of earnings: the EBITDA you would not take to IC
  4. Covenant and portfolio monitoring
  5. Catch the fraud before you wire
  6. The investment committee memo
  7. Vet the manager before the check
  8. Underwrite the credit
01

Screen the deal

The partner's call: is this worth a data room, or a pass?

Triage the teaser and first financials the way a deal team does in the first hour: size the market, find the one thing that has to be true, and flag the deal-killer early instead of in the appendix. Read the market in an afternoon while the other bidder waits six weeks for the consultants.

PE LBO Diligence Pack →
02

Build the LBO and read the return

The partner's call: bid or pass, and at what price.

Build the sources and uses, the debt schedule, and the returns, then read where the return actually comes from: leverage or the business. The model an associate burns a week on, in an afternoon, with a hard self-check that re-derives MOIC and IRR a second way before you trust it.

Live LBO Returns Calculator → The LBO Model Pack →
03

Quality of earnings

The partner's call: which EBITDA is real and which is theater.

Bridge reported to adjusted EBITDA with every add-back itemized and challenged, separate one-time from recurring, and surface the working capital that was pulled forward. Output the number you would take to IC, and the one you would not.

QoE in the Diligence Pack → The Audit Second Read →
04

Covenant and portfolio monitoring

The partner's call: which company is closest to a breach, a quarter early.

Read the whole book the way a credit analyst does: recompute leverage and coverage, test covenant headroom against the test date, and catch the margin compression hiding under the growth. The fastest grower can be the one closest to the breach, because growth hides leverage.

Live Covenant Headroom Monitor → Portfolio Monitoring Pack →
05

Catch the fraud before you wire

The partner's call: is the story in the footnotes the same as the story in the cash.

Be the skeptic in the room: tie reported profit back to the cash that actually arrived, hunt the balances no bank can confirm, and read the footnotes nobody reads. The hole at Wirecard was sitting in the gap between profit and cash, where almost nobody looks.

The Forensic Skeptic →
06

The investment committee memo

The partner's call: the one line you would sign your name to.

Name the single bet the deal rides on, price the base, downside, and walk-away case, and write the risk that kills the deal before the room finds it. The memo was never about formatting the slides. It was knowing which risk actually binds.

IC memo in the Diligence Pack →
07

Vet the manager before the check

The allocator's call: find the reason not to fund, before you fund.

Run the operational and return diligence an allocator runs before a manager gets capital: pull the returns apart for skill versus a rising market, check who holds and prices the money, and do the fee math the way it really lands.

Allocator Manager DD →
08

Underwrite the credit

The committee's call: will the cash be there to service this debt through a downturn nobody promised.

Test the cash flow against the debt service, not the headline EBITDA, model the downside the borrower left out, and size the recovery if it breaks, not just the yield if it works.

Private Credit Underwriting →
The honest ceiling. These run on your own data, in your own Claude, on a $20 plan. They do not pull live filings on their own, replace the partner who signs, or constitute investment advice. Every lane ends at a human sign-off. The model is the analyst. You are still the investment committee. KKR and Blackstone are referenced as the standard the work matches, no affiliation implied.
Built by consultance.ai. The full operating system, on your own deals.
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