????5. Is the company gaining market share?If the unit economics are working, a company must assess its total addressable market and its share within that market. If the competition is growing more quickly (while also earning sufficient returns on invested capital), then the investor must figure out why and help look for solutions. It could be a sales and marketing execution problem, or a product problem. It may be a market power problem that can only be fixed by pivoting to a different or more specialized niche. If a company is having difficulty gaining market share in a certain market, then it has to question how long it should remain in that market.

????Investors with the discipline to consistently ask these five strategic questions will have a framework to evaluate a company's tactical performance, which in turn will enable the investors to create more portfolio company value. After all, creating portfolio company value is what private equity investors are paid to do.

????Tyler Newton is a partner and research director at Catalyst Investors, a growth private equity firm focused on tech-enabled services. He is based in New York City and blogs athttp://www.tylernewton.com/