Backing people, properly: Miles Otway on the First Close podcast.

October, 2026

Ama Capital’s Founding Partner joined Tom Pinnell of Langham Hall to talk about operating partners, founder assessment and building an investment firm from scratch.

“We back people” is easy to say, and every lower mid-market investor claims to. But what does it actually mean?

That is the question Miles Otway, Founding Partner of Ama Capital, takes on in the latest episode of First Close, the podcast from Langham Hall in which Tom Pinnell, Head of Commercial, Europe, talks to emerging private equity managers about what it really takes to build an investment firm.

Most investment processes allow for a series of short, structured meetings. They tell you a great deal about a business, and far less about how its leader will adapt, how ready they are for change and how prepared they are to lead it. As Miles puts it, the challenge is rarely whether a founder can make the change. It is whether they will.

That is where Ama’s operator-led model makes the difference. Our in-house Operating Partners have run PE-backed businesses, hired the teams, worked with them day to day and done the 90-hour weeks needed to transition a business. They have dealt with crises and seen people under pressure first hand. So even in the same brief meetings with a founder and management team, they read the signals differently.

“It doesn’t mean that the decision will be different that often, but the quality of that decision is better.” Miles Otway, Founding Partner, Ama Capital

That perspective means Ama assesses teams better up front, and supports them better once we are partnered together.

Listen to the full episode of First Close on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and all major platforms.

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