Partner with a private equity firm for the next chapter. Liquidity today while you keep a meaningful seat in the value still to be created.
Selling to a private equity firm can provide liquidity today while preserving the opportunity to participate in future growth. Unlike strategic acquirers, financial sponsors are buying the future value of the business.
That changes the relationship. Sponsors typically retain and back the management team to execute the plan, which means the founder is not handing the company off. He or she is obtaining funding for the next phase of growth. Our job is to find the partner whose thesis and incentives line up with yours, then run a process that proves the terms.
Private equity buyers generally pursue one of two strategies. Knowing which one a fund is running, and where your company sits in it, is what determines who pays the most and why.
A sponsor acquires a market-leading business to anchor a new thesis, the platform other acquisitions build onto. Premiums reward scale, market position, and a management team that can lead the roll-up.
A sponsor adds a complementary business to an existing portfolio company, extending products, customers, capabilities, or geography. Value comes from the fit, the synergies, and the gap you close.
Financial sponsor M&A is the right path when an investor can underwrite the numbers with confidence, the growth story is real, and the founder wants liquidity without leaving.
Predictable revenue, healthy margins, and the financial visibility that lets an investor underwrite the business.
Clear ways to accelerate growth: new markets, operational improvement, or bolt-on acquisitions a sponsor can fund.
A desire to take liquidity off the table while staying involved and sharing in the value created over the next hold period.
Private equity transactions are process-driven and intensely competitive. The same six-step discipline applies, tuned to create tension across a sophisticated buyer universe and hold it through to close.
Quality-of-earnings, model, customer data cube, thesis pressure test.
CIM, management presentation, data room, growth plan a sponsor can fund.
Platform and bolt-on funds engaged in parallel. Fully vetted before outreach.
First-round IOIs, management meetings, second-round bids, LOI.
Exclusivity, confirmatory diligence, rollover and governance terms, close.
Board onboarding, 100-day plan, founder advocacy through the hold.
A sample of private equity engagements completed by the senior team: platform recapitalizations and bolt-on sales alike.
Recent writing from the senior team on the mechanics of selling to a financial sponsor.
A mid-market sponsor has 4,500 conversations a year to close three deals. The call is not about your business. It is about their fund.
The balance-sheet math redistributes fifteen to twenty-five percent of enterprise value, quietly, in a schedule the founder rarely reads. The peg is where it happens.
30 minutes with the senior team. No commitment. We will pressure-test the growth story, map the right funds, and give you a grounded view on whether the numbers are ready to underwrite.
Schedule a Working SessionThe deal terms that quietly move value, monthly, from Shane. No spam, no marketing, no padding. Just the writing that founders actually keep.