The Private Equity Executive Forum is Open Future Forum's community for the leaders of private equity, and it is based where the work increasingly happens: Silicon Valley. It is a room for senior private equity executives, operating partners, investment professionals, and the leaders who serve the private equity ecosystem — convened for small, off-the-record dinners and gatherings across the Bay Area.
It sits alongside the CEO, CFO, CMO, and CISO Executive Forums as part of Open Future Forum, the Silicon Valley executive community founded in 2019. This piece is about why the private equity seat belongs in the Valley, and what the room is built to do.
What It Is
The Silicon Valley Private Equity Executive Forum is a private, invitation-only community. It brings together the people who make the private equity engine run, and the leaders who serve them, for candid conversation with peers carrying the same mandate. Everyone in the room is a giver. There is no pitch, no agenda, and no recording — the conversations are the ones private equity leaders can only have off the record.
The forum is not a fund, a conference, or a service provider. It is a room. Its only product is trust: the kind that lets a managing director compare notes on a value-creation plan, or an operating partner test a call on a portfolio company, with people who have made the same decisions themselves.
Why Silicon Valley
Private equity used to sit at a distance from technology. That distance is gone. A growing share of buyouts, carve-outs, and growth deals now center on software and technology-enabled businesses, and the value-creation plan runs straight through product, data, and increasingly AI. The people who understand that work — the operating partners, the technical diligence advisors, the investment professionals sourcing in the sector — are concentrated in the Bay Area.
Silicon Valley is also where the capital and the operating talent already gather. A private equity leader in the region can, in a single evening, sit with peers from other firms, operators who have run the playbook, and advisors who see across dozens of deals. No other place puts that combination in one room as easily. A forum based here is not a novelty; it is where the conversation already wants to be.
See the Private Equity Executive Forum →
Who Belongs
The forum is built for partners, principals, and managing directors at private equity firms; operating partners and portfolio operators; investment professionals and deal-team leaders; and selected advisors, lenders, LPs, and service leaders across the ecosystem. Firm size and strategy vary; the common thread is seniority and the seat.
The informal selection criterion is the one Open Future Forum applies everywhere: does this person give more than they take? Members are identified by how they show up long before an invitation is extended. It is a small room by design, so the caliber of the peers is the point.
How It Works
The private dinner is the heart of the forum: small rooms of 8 to 30 guests, off the record, in San Francisco and on the Peninsula. Around the dinners, members gather in the settings that build real trust over time — panel events on value creation and the state of the market, wine tastings, golf, sailing on the bay, private boxes at Giants games, and AI briefings tailored to the investment lifecycle, from diligence and deal sourcing to portfolio operations.
Open Future Forum runs two tiers: Forum Select, our invitation-only private gatherings, and Forum Events, our open panels and gatherings. The Private Equity Executive Forum sits inside that program, so members move between intimate dinners and larger events as it suits them.
How to Join
Membership is by invitation or personal referral, reviewed personally. If you are a private equity leader, or a leader serving the ecosystem, and you want a seat at the next Bay Area gathering, reach out through Open Future Forum. Attending a Forum Event is often the natural first step.