Sector Focus
Three sectors. Decades of operating depth in each.
We advise exclusively in tech-enabled business services, with genuine operator fluency in three sectors where our principal has built, run, and sold businesses. We advise on transactions across the United States, with particular depth in the Southeast: Georgia, the Carolinas, northern Florida, Alabama, and Tennessee. Decades of operating history in the region give us direct, personal access to founder-owned businesses.
Many of the strongest sponsor theses in this space pair a VAR platform with MSP, professional services, and security add-ons, a structure we understand from having operated inside it, and one that shapes how we evaluate every sector below.
IT Value-Added Resellers (VARs)
An IT value-added reseller (VAR) purchases hardware, software, and cloud products from technology manufacturers and distributors, then resells them to business customers with added services: design, integration, configuration, support, and financing. VARs sit at the center of how mid-market and enterprise organizations actually buy technology.
Typical engagement profile: founder-owned VARs from roughly $20M to $250M in revenue. Larger organizations tend to run formal, banker-led processes; our value is greatest where relationships, not auctions, drive the conversation.
Through the buyer’s lens
· Recurring revenue quality varies enormously across VARs. The difference between resale-heavy and services-heavy models drives valuation, and the mix is often misunderstood in a CIM.
· Vendor relationships (Cisco, Dell, HPE, Microsoft and their program tiers) are real assets with real transfer risk in a transaction.
· The best VARs have been quietly shifting to managed and consumption models for a decade; knowing how far along that journey a target really is requires operator judgment.
Managed Service Providers (MSPs)
A managed service provider (MSP) delivers ongoing IT operations for its customers under recurring contracts: monitoring, management, security, help desk, cloud, and network infrastructure. MSPs are among the most actively acquired businesses in tech-enabled services because of their contractual recurring revenue.
Typical engagement profile: MSPs from the low single-digit millions in revenue upward. Strong recurring margins make well-run MSPs attractive add-on candidates at sizes well below traditional platform thresholds.
Through the buyer’s lens
· Not all recurring revenue is equal: contract terms, seat versus device pricing, and true gross margin per customer separate durable MSPs from fragile ones.
· Technician utilization, tooling stack (RMM/PSA), and security posture tell you more about scalability than the revenue line does.
· MSP roll-ups live and die on integration. Platform buyers need conviction about which operating model survives the combination.
Contact Center & Customer Experience (CX)
Contact center and customer experience (CX) organizations design, implement, and operate the platforms businesses use to communicate with their customers, spanning CCaaS platforms such as Genesys, NICE, and Five9, unified communications, AI-driven customer engagement, and the services layer around them.
Through the buyer’s lens
· The sector is mid-migration: on-premises platforms are moving to CCaaS, and AI is reshaping the agent model. Understanding where a target sits in that migration is the core diligence question.
· Platform partnerships and certifications (Genesys, NICE, Five9) concentrate both expertise and revenue in ways that reward careful commercial diligence.
· Our principal co-founded and ran a contact center solutions provider for nearly 12 years; this is the sector we know from the inside.
Beyond the Core
Adjacent practices we evaluate alongside the core sectors.
Platform strategies rarely stop at a single sector. We regularly assess adjacent capability acquisitions that strengthen a tech-enabled services platform:
IT Professional Services
Pure-play consulting and implementation firms, often natural add-ons to a VAR or MSP platform, where services depth strengthens recurring relationships.
Cybersecurity Practices
Managed security providers and security-focused services firms, one of the most actively pursued capability additions in tech-enabled services today.
Microsoft Practices
Firms built around the Microsoft ecosystem, including cloud migration, modern work, and application services, with partner designations that carry real transaction value.
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