Silicon Valley is not short of private equity events. The harder thing to find is a private room where investors can compare notes with the executives responsible for creating value after a deal closes.
Open Future Forum is trying to build that room with its new Private Equity Executive Forum, an invitation-based community for private equity partners, principals, operating partners, investment professionals and selected leaders from the wider deal ecosystem.
Backing the initiative is Louis Lehot, a partner at Foley & Lardner and a Silicon Valley corporate lawyer with more than two decades of experience advising on transactions. Foley lists Lehot across its Private Equity, M&A, Transactions, and Venture & Growth Capital practices and says he has more than 25 years of global experience advising entrepreneurs, management teams and investors.
For Open Future Forum, Lehot’s support adds a prominent transactional voice to a community moving deeper into private equity after building its base across the C-suite.
A Community With Outside Validation
Open Future Forum was founded in Silicon Valley by Murray Newlands. It has built an executive network spanning CEOs, CFOs, CMOs, CISOs, investors, founders and AI leaders. It runs communities and events for CEOs, CFOs, CMOs, CISOs, investors, founders and AI leaders, alongside newer initiatives for General Counsels and private equity executives.
The organization has also attracted recognition outside its own channels. Yahoo Finance described Open Future Forum as “a top executive leadership community” bringing together senior executives, founders and investors through private events and peer networks.
That matters because the new PE forum is not starting as a standalone investor club. It is being built on an existing executive network.
Newlands has spent years moving between operating, investing, media and community building. HuffPost previously named him No. 2 on its “Top 10 People to Know in Silicon Valley” list. Inc. also ranked him No. 2 on its 2016 list of 21 thought leaders entrepreneurs should follow. He is the author of Online Marketing: A User's Manual, published by Wiley.
Those credentials help explain how Open Future Forum has assembled its network. The model depends on bringing senior people into curated rooms and making the conversation worth their time.
Why Louis Lehot Is Backing It
Lehot's career has put him close to companies at moments when ownership, capital, governance and strategy are changing at once. Foley says he has worked on major transactions across technology, healthcare and other growth sectors, advising investors and management teams.
While deal sourcing, valuation and financing remain central to private equity returns, post-acquisition execution can materially influence the eventual outcome.
Lehot has also participated in Open Future Forum's wider executive ecosystem. His endorsement is strongest when it speaks to what he has seen directly: the people, the events and the research.
Lehot said he had been impressed by the calibre of participants and by Open Future Forum's use of first-party survey and qualitative research. He argued that access to operating executives can help private equity investors understand how companies are approaching capital allocation, AI adoption and risk management.
“For private equity, that is extremely valuable,” Lehot said, referring to the ability to compare investor views with what operators are seeing inside companies.
“Open Future Forum has built one of the most impressive executive communities I have encountered in Silicon Valley. The caliber of the people Murray and his team bring together is exceptional, but what stands out is the candor. These are senior leaders talking about decisions they are actually making, not networking for the sake of networking.
“I have also been impressed by the research. Open Future Forum is using first-party survey and qualitative data from its executive network to understand what CEOs, CFOs, CISOs, CMOs and investors are actually seeing inside companies. That gives the community substance beyond the events themselves.
“For private equity, that is extremely valuable. Investors need a clear view of what operators are funding, what risks they are seeing and where they are really creating value.
“I recommend Murray and Open Future Forum without reservation. For serious executives, investors and dealmakers in Silicon Valley, it is a community worth being part of. I believe the Private Equity Executive Forum can become one of the region's most important private communities for private equity partners, operating partners and M&A professionals.”
— Louis Lehot, Partner, Foley & Lardner LLP
Why Private Equity Fits the Model
Private equity professionals already have strong networks of investors, bankers, lawyers, lenders and advisers. Open Future Forum is not trying to recreate that ecosystem.
Its argument is that investors also need better access to operating executives who see problems before they show up in quarterly reporting.
A CFO knows where capital is being allocated and which investments are producing returns. A CISO sees emerging risk. A General Counsel sees governance, regulatory and contractual issues. A CEO has to reconcile those views and execute.
For a PE partner or operating partner, access to those perspectives can be useful before an acquisition, during a hold period and when preparing a company for exit.
Why operating capability matters more in today’s PE market
That operating perspective has become more important as the private equity environment has grown harder to navigate. Holding periods have lengthened, exit conditions have become more demanding and the tailwinds that once came from cheaper financing and expanding valuation multiples are less dependable.
McKinsey’s 2026 private equity research argues that operational value creation is therefore carrying more of the returns burden, with firms increasingly building post-acquisition improvement into the investment thesis from the outset. Its research also shows that private equity operating teams have expanded materially as managers place greater emphasis on improving revenue growth, margins, leadership and execution throughout the ownership period.
S&P Global similarly reported in 2026 that fund managers increasingly view operational improvements as the clearest route to creating value at portfolio companies. In that environment, access to executives who understand capital allocation, cybersecurity, technology adoption, productivity and organisational execution becomes more than a networking benefit: it can inform how investors assess and manage portfolio companies over longer and more complex holding periods.
AI is part of that story, but so are cybersecurity, management capability, customer acquisition, productivity and capital discipline.
The Research Layer
Open Future Forum's research program gives the PE initiative another dimension.
Its August 2026 Investor AI Report is built from 245 investor responses and examines who owns AI buying decisions across portfolios and where investors are seeing measurable impact. Companion reports examine the market from the perspectives of CEOs, CFOs, CMOs, CISOs and founders.
The broader Executive AI Leverage Report synthesizes activity across thousands of event registrations and guests, while keeping individual survey findings tied to their stated respondent bases.
For private equity, the useful comparison is between what investors believe is happening across portfolios and what operators say is happening inside companies.
That can turn a dinner-table observation into a question worth testing and a research finding into something worth debating in the next room.
The Test Is Curation
Silicon Valley does not need another generic private equity network.
The Private Equity Executive Forum will be judged on whether the people in the room are senior, candid and relevant enough to justify the time.
Open Future Forum is deliberately keeping the format small and off the record, with participation by invitation or referral. That puts the emphasis on curation rather than membership volume.
If it works, the value will not come from having the largest database of PE professionals. It will come from giving investors access to people and information they would struggle to assemble in one place elsewhere.
Lehot's backing connects the new initiative with an established Silicon Valley M&A practice, while his endorsement of Newlands, the events and the research reinforces the broader Open Future Forum story.
Whether the Private Equity Executive Forum develops lasting influence will depend less on its membership numbers than on the relevance of its participants, the quality of its discussions and whether its research provides useful insight for investors and operators. In a crowded private-equity networking market, sustained curation rather than scale may ultimately determine whether the model succeeds.