Small by Choice. Powerful by Design.

If you’ve attended any of Kayo’s Private Equity Summits over the past 13 years, you already know what it means to be in a room where the women around you aren’t just accomplished. They’re your people. They speak your language. They understand the deal lifecycle, the investor relationships, the pressure of a live process. That’s always been the point.

The conference landscape is changing. Events are getting bigger, and new ones are popping up every month it seems. Kayo has always been the intentionally smaller option on the calendar, built around roughly 300 attendees who are there to do more than collect badges. But the women in our network told us something: they want Kayo to find a way to become even more curated. More focused. More regional. More deliberate about who’s in the room.

So that’s exactly what we built.

Kayo’s 13th Annual Private Equity Series

The mega conference model has a real problem, and if you’ve spent time on the circuit, you already know what it is. 1,200 people on an expansive venue campus for a week sounds impressive… Until you’re actually trying to navigate it. Competing for the same conversations, missing out on programming because you’ve spent thousands of dollars and need to book 137,246,145 meetings, and leaving with a stack of business cards and not much else. It’s similar to the odds of you meeting the love of your life at a concert – slim to none.

Kayo’s new format was built around a different premise: that the most valuable professional connections happen by quality, not quantity. Each Forum brings together approximately ~100 senior decision-makers by application or invitation only. GPs, LPs, investment bankers, lenders, and trusted advisors, anchored by the top voices nationally and regionally that actually matter to the people in the room.

The result is something closer to an invitation-caliber gathering than a traditional conference. Intimate enough to have real conversations. Curated enough to make sure the right people are in the room for you to drive your business initiatives forward.

What to Expect

Each Forum runs 1-day, high-impact programming. Expert-led panels covering M&A outlook, exit strategies, value creation, fund strategies and sector spotlights. Topics that are directly relevant to where deal activity is right now. Structured networking sprinkled across the day, not bolted on at the end. A Connection Café, Meet the Speaker conversations, a cocktail reception, and the kind of 1:1 access that typically takes years of relationship-building to create.

The audience comprises of mid to senior level professionals, and spans the full private equity ecosystem. Just like past Summits, the Forums will draw participants from firms including Blackstone, HarbourVest Partners, Pritzker Private Capital, Cambridge Associates, The Carlyle Group, Hamilton Lane, and Advent International, among many others.

Kayo has always been deliberate about who takes the stage. The speakers you’ll hear from are the same women leading deals, managing portfolios, and setting the strategies at some of the most recognized firms in the industry

Four Cities, One Community

What makes the series format work isn’t just the intimacy of each individual Forum. It’s the continuity across all four. Whether you attend Boston, Dallas, New York, or Chicago, you’re plugging into the same network. A community of women in private equity who are building something together, across geographies and firm types, year over year.

That’s the part that doesn’t show up on a conference agenda. It’s why attendees keep coming back.

If you’re ready to stop collecting conference badges and start making the connections that actually move your business forward, this is the room to be in.

Attendance is by invitation and/or application. Request your pass to attend the Forum of your choice here.

I’ll see you this fall. Happy Networking!