Vampires: A Private Equity Cautionary Tale
A work of complete fiction for Halloween, and any similarities to real living PE firms is eerie, but completely accidental and unintended.
Did you hear about the private equity “roll up” of vampires?
Prologue:
I work with a variety of patients, and one of the “people” who came to see me—and insisted on a late night appointment—well, it turns out he’s a vampire. He works in the family business, which, of course, involves pumping blood out of humans and drinking it. Everything we saw in Blade, Blade II, the incomparable Blade III, and even Underworld and whatever the Underworld sequels are—those are basically the show Silicon Valley but for vampires. It’s theoretically fiction.1 Here is the true story2 of what happened3 when a private equity fund got involved in the literal4 business of sucking the life blood out of us humans.5
Mandatory Legal Disclaimer
What follows is a work of fiction and the identity of my vampire patient has been changed to protect his privacy, despite HIPAA not really considering fictional blood sucking vampires to be a covered entity (unless we count Optum).6
Inauspicious Starts
In the beginning they were promising to make things easier. OnlyChoice BloodCare Partners (OBP) was the name of their fund. Honestly, the name summed up the situation, but they said all the right things:
No more mirrors!
Professionalization of the whole blood supply chain!
Providing the capital to scale up our operation to match our dreams!
It felt like they really understood what drinking blood was all about! After looking at the balance sheet, it looked like there were inefficiencies—leakage of valuable blood! Other private equity firms seemed like they were a little creeped out by the whole vampire thing, but these guys, they really seem to get it. It’s like they really didn’t have a beating heart at all, which is exactly what you’re looking for as a vampire seeking operational expertise and an infusion of capital.
For example, why are we disposing of sharp fangs when, really, we could be poking people with them again and again? These guys really knew what they were talking about! Most vampires, being undead, had completed their education a long time ago, and weren’t very tech or business savvy to be honest. I mean, many of them are handsome—even more handsome than the werewolf alternatives that young women were considering dating. But in reality, vampires are pretty old. While Sesame Street’s The Count is an exception, for most of them, familiarity with Excel is limited and they really honestly wouldn’t know how to build a financial model if you threatened them with a crucifix.
The private equity guys—and they were all guys—they had a really good track record of creating what they told us was sustainable models for werewolves. I even knew some of the lycanthropes in their portfolio, and instead of howling at the moon from whatever lame forest they happened to be in when they turned from man into wolf-creature… well, now they were doing it from their yachts in Ibiza! And every werewolf on Reddit’s r/werewolves is really excited for yacht week—it’s in Transylvania, 2025.
Plus, as vampires, my undead colleagues and I always had a dream that, you know, things could be different. There could be enough blood to go around.We wouldn’t have to be pulling overnights every single night. Maybe I’d even get my own coffin! Those things cost an arm and a leg, I’ll tell you. The private equity guy said it could happen! All we had to do is sign a term sheet with our own blood, and the math was pretty complicated. I mean, I don’t know that much about business, but they made a whole new holding company. They called it a “Serum Service Organization.” Apparently all the blood would be accounted for, but some of the platelets would enure to the SSO? It looked like they were going to invest and scale what we were doing. Look, I’m a vampire, I wanna suck blood, I don’t wanna be burdened with balance sheets and having to learn accrual accounting, and maybe, just maybe, I thought, I could finally go out and sparkle during the daytime for once.
It turns out the term sheet thing is a lot more complicated than I was led to believe, because their term sheet seem to indicate that they would have a controlling interest in my whole vampire bloodline. Which was weird, because they weren't undead, so what could they want to do with all the blood? I asked “Lord Gordy, Jr."7 from the firm this question: “Efficiency.” I mean, it sounded like a good answer. He went to Wharton. But here’s the thing: there was this weird calculation between their investment, at 51%, and then they were going to buy some of our Sire’s equity thereafter, and it seemed like they wanted to invest their own capital, not do more fundraising or something? It was hard to see how it all worked... but frankly, we were running out of options pretty quickly. If you think vampires are bad when it comes to sucking blood, you should see the short-term high-interest business loans we used to buy all those coffins!
A Meal, Most Delightful
They took us out to a really nice restaurant that specialized in serving only the finest vital essence of the living, so they said. It looked Italian to me. There was even plenty of “red wine” to go around. The weird thing was, when I asked him if I could record the toast for posterity, they were skittish. Like, the kind of skittish I usually feel when someone wants to take my picture, or straighten up next to me in a mirror, or get anywhere near holy water. It seemed like audio recording was their daylight. I just wanted to do a toast! We were going into business together, right?
Things went downhill pretty quickly after that. Look, I may be a vampire, and I may suck blood for the sustenance of my undead and eternal life, but I have limits. And frankly, I kind of resented the inept management they8 were putting in place. With the standards of vampiric conduct we had held up for literally all of eternity, they managed to take all of a few months to destroy our brand of high caliber blood sucking.
Calibrated Blood Health
I didn’t really understand it, but the private equity investors, they brought on some executive. This guy supposedly had experience in the bodily fluid space, and he said we needed to have a legal medical practice. He called it an “Infusion Center”. This seemed a little weird to me. I mean, if anything, we pump blood out of people, but he said if we did a medical thing we’d probably be able to get more blood out if we had an excuse to have IV access. My family is traditional and we have just used fangs for generations. Our immortal fangs work. They are efficient. They’re built-in. But they started waving their hands and saying something about a J-code on the claims.
It turns out there isn’t a CPT code9 for “Using your fangs like the Dark Lord intended, to get blood out of people, initial encounter” Maybe “Interactive complexity” would apply but that doesn’t pay too well.
The next thing you know, reviews started showing up on Glassdoor. At first they were positive… too positive:
Pros: I absolutely love my job. I used to work for Dracula himself, and this is just as good! I have grown professionally, and in no way been exposed to garlic or holy water.
Cons: Calibrated acquired another company and there were some “good apples” that needed weeding out! But out with the old, in with the new(ly) undead!
Advice to management: Keep it up for all eternity!
I really didn’t appreciate them referring to my former colleagues at the mausoleum as “good apples” they inherited.
The next thing you know, they stopped paying the rent on the mausoleum! Now I’ve got this lawsuit10 hitting me. The mausoleum was a sublease. And the landlord was suing because the terms were for eternity and my name was still on the lease!
It made no sense. I looked up Calibrated Blood Health, and it didn’t even exist in the state registry of professional corporate entities!
Through the Looking Glass… door
Glassdoor reviews started to get grim… I mean, I don’t actually have a reflection in any kind of mirror or glass structure, so I’ve never been a huge Glassdoor fan, but wow. Shadows were starting to appear and as a vampire, we just don’t do shadows:
Pros: They didn’t seem to care to validate that I had an active blood sucking license, so that was a timesaver.
Cons: Calibrated Blood Health has replaced all of the senior vampires, and I mean all of them. It’s just a bunch of “vampire bat practitioners”, who go around referring to themselves as “advanced practice vampiric providers” and keep demanding to suck blood to the full extent of their blood sucking authority. But honestly, I think the supervisory “Vampiric Medical Count” they hired to sign off on their documentation for the Serum Service Organization isn’t even undead. Like, I think he played Dracula in a high school performance. I think he’s actually, like, a living human being. That’s how messed up this place is. They have one of the living supervising minions of the undead and sucking the blood out of other humans. Can you imagine?
Advice to management: If you’re gonna run a vampire organization, at least hire some actual legitimate vampires, who are actually among the undead. If everyone who works in your clinic is living, you might as well be a Quest labs, or Walgreens Theranos Clinic, but you’re sure as hell not running an organization with the kind of “denizens of the night” authority that used to run this place.
It seemed like they were destroying everything we had built over centuries.
Then this: they hired fake reviewer zombies! Can you imagine?
It seemed pretty suspicious—they were reviewing not only our “Infusion Center” but other companies, all around the underworld, and it seemed to be the same crew doing reviews from Pennsylvania to Transylvania, and they all posted the reviews at the same exact time! How gullible do they think people—granted, people looking to get their blood sucked out by vampire-impersonator Advance Practice Bat Practitioners—are?
Then… a week later… this was posted on Glassdoor, and—if I had a heart that beat, instead of sitting still and black in my chest— it would have skipped one of those beats:
The review was titled:
Completely Uncorrupted! How a Grand House of the Night Became a Bullsh*t Blood Draw Lab “Masquerading” as a Vampiric Bloodline
Where to even begin... This company bought The Vampire Mausoleum (which also had its problems, but at least was a family business that valued and understood sucking the blood out of humans) back in February.11 Since then, nearly every single senior vampire from the coven has left. Half were staked in the heart upon the merger, but since then, no one has wanted to stick around—there’s a puff of smoke, and suddenly it’s another bat flying out the window! They severely undernourish staff on the death-sustaining blood of the human sheeple flock. They refuse to do any serum supply negotiations, but will string you along pretending that they might offer you a sip for SEVERAL MONTHS. One Blood Infusion Associate was promised a liter in June 202212 and as of mid-October 2022 has still had not tasted a drop. There are now mirrors everywhere! They have an overwhelming amount of surveillance on their employees, requiring everyone to be in their “Infusion Center” full time even though everyone can fly—in the form of a bat— to their prey remotely. Salaried staff have to clock in and out every day—sometimes when the sun is still up!—which also tracks their location. Some staff have to clock in using a system that scans their pale faces.
It’s at this point that I really had to check my gut, and shake my head slowly over what I was reading. Why the hell are they bothering with a clock in/clock out system for individuals who are among the undead? Don’t they know we can’t even enter the premises unless we’re invited? And once you let us in, well, that’s it. You don’t need a time clock for individuals who literally can’t enter unless they’re invited and then are incentivized to stay for the blood on the premises. It’s just missing the actual literal point of what it is to be among the servants of the undead and the damned. They may understand spreadsheets and sucking the life out of the businesses they acquire, but they just don’t understand vampire culture.
Completely Unsubstantiated Rumors
Another review documented some significant legal troubles they were going through:
Almost everyone in management has at least one lawsuit against them. Since Calibrated13 bought the company, at least three lawsuits have been brought against them (including workplace lack-of-harassment, and, most disturbingly, sexual propriety allegations).
Vampirina interviewed for a gig, but instead of trying to seduce her during the offsite in a swanky Transylvania castle—only the most appropriate behaviors took place, like they were running some limp fish human organization. No seduction. No gentle caress of the neck before the fangs clamp down. Nothing. Just completely unacceptable… no real vampire would ever allow it.
What Did You Think Would Happen When You Invited the Private Equity Investors In?
Frankly, I’m ashamed. It feels like somebody has stabbed me in the heart, you know, with a wooden stake. You know what? It’s worse than that—it’s like they did the stake thing, and then cut off my head and stuffed my mouth with holy wafers. These private equity guys might as well be walking around wearing garlic necklaces and a crucifix all the time. Once you let a vampire in… well, it’s not as bad as private equity, that’s all I have to say.
—O. Scott Muir, Vamp.D.
But it’s really just a documentary done after the fact.
This is in no way a true story.
It’s not what happened. It is fiction.
Figurative.
I mean, private equity is pretty bloodsucking, but it’s not what I’m literally talking about in this context. This is a work of fiction.
Any similarity to actual private equity investors is completely coincidental. No conclusions could or should be drawn about specific companies or specific private equity firms or investors. What follows is flights of fancy, satire, and nothing about real people whatsoever. None of the things illustrated are based in reality. All of it is just pulled straight from thin air in my imagination as a writer.
The name is fictional. I use the name, Gordy, and I don’t know a single Gordy. I have no Gordys in my life. I’ve never met someone named Gordy. That’s how fictional this is.
The word “they” in this sentence refers to the fictional private equity investors described in the story, and any relationship or resemblance to real persons is completely coincidental. Can you even tell these guys apart as it is?
The Current Procedural Terminology (CPT) codes offer doctors and health care professionals a uniform language for coding medical services and procedures to streamline reporting, increase accuracy and efficiency.
These are, of course, fictional lawsuits, and have no bearing on any actual legal proceeding that may or may not be taking place in the real world. Any relationship between the lawsuits, filed by the fictional characters in this fictional story, and any actual lawsuits filed against your author, is completely coincidental.
A fictional month as far as I can tell. Months have 30 days or 31 days, I don’t know what’s up with this month that has a variable number of days, it’s made up for the benefit of the story. Any similarity to normative calendar months is completely coincidence.
A completely fictional date at which no real negotiations are known to have taken place by this author.
A fictional name for a company. Any similarity to real people is completely coincidental. As an aside, can you imagine if some litigious individual felt that this all actually referred to them? That would be pretty incriminating. Away. It doesn’t hurt any actual living people. It’s about vampires. Vampires are fictional. So are werewolves. Fiction. Not real. Satire. Humor.