Claude for Private Equity
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First 15 Minutes

A guided first session. Open Claude, give it a real document, and walk away with something useful.

The fastest way to understand Claude is to use it on something real. In the next fifteen minutes you’ll go from a blank screen to a one-page summary of an actual document from your desk, and you’ll see exactly why this becomes a daily habit.

  1. The plus button opens the attach menu, where you add a PDF, Word, or Excel file, or pull one from a connected source such as Google Drive.
  2. The attach menu lists where files can come from. Uploading from your computer is the everyday route.
  3. The model selector shows which Claude model is answering. The default is the right choice for almost all PE work.
  4. The send arrow submits your message. You can also press Enter.

Your first session

  1. Open Claude and start a new chat

    Go to claude.ai and sign in with your work account. You’ll land on a chat screen with a single message box. That box is the whole interface: you simply type, or attach a file, and press send.

  2. Attach a document

    Click the attachment (paperclip) icon and upload a PDF, Word doc, or Excel file. Claude reads the entire file: a 60-page CIM is no problem. Wait for the file to finish attaching before you send.

  3. Ask with clear instructions

    Don’t just say “summarize this.” Tell Claude who it’s helping, what you want, and how to format it. Paste the prompt below; it works for almost any deal document.

  4. Read, then push back

    Skim the output. Then ask follow-ups in the same chat: “Expand the risks section,” “What’s missing?”, “Put the financials in a table.” Claude remembers everything in the conversation, so each message builds on the last.

  5. Verify before you use anything

    Check any figure or claim against the original document before it goes near a deliverable. Claude is fast and fluent, but it can be confidently wrong, so the source is always the final word.

The prompt to start with

Prompt · One-page summary of any deal document 
You are assisting a Private Equity associate. I’ve attached a document for a potential opportunity.
Give me a one-page summary using these headings:
    

  1. Business overview: what they do and how they make money
    2. 

  2. Financial highlights: revenue, EBITDA, growth, margins
    3. 

  3. Why it could be attractive: the investment angle
    4. 

  4. Key risks and open questions
    5. 

Use bullet points. Keep it concise. Flag anything the document is vague about or that looks unusual.

Notice what made that prompt work: it set a role (“assisting a PE associate”), gave a clear task, specified the format (headings, bullets), and asked Claude to flag gaps. That four-part shape (role, task, format, scrutiny) is the backbone of almost every good prompt, and the Anatomy of a Good Prompt page breaks it down properly.

Try one more turn

The real power shows up in the second message. With the summary on screen, try one of these:

  • “Turn the financial highlights into a table with year-on-year growth.”
  • “What are the three questions I should ask management first?”
  • “Rewrite the overview for a partner who has thirty seconds.”

Each reply builds on the document and everything said so far, with no need to re-explain.

What you just learned

In one short session you’ve seen the entire core loop: give context → ask precisely → refine → verify. Everything else in this guide makes that loop faster and more powerful: better prompts, reusable Projects, and playbooks tuned to specific PE tasks. A natural next step is What Claude Is (and Isn’t) to ground the fundamentals before you go deeper.