Aldrich Hall Partners
About Us
You’ve spent decades building a world-class business. Recently, new competitors funded by private equity firms have entered your space, and you’re considering a change. However, none of the current options suit you.
These new consolidators want to “buy you out completely,” even if you still have more years to go and a vision for your business. You’re worried that partnering with a private equity firm comes at the expense of your valued employees, culture, and customers. Selling to a competitor, on the other hand, may not preserve the brand and legacy that you spent your life building.
After helping others navigate these same issues, we started Aldrich Hall Partners to solve this problem with our “platform partnership” approach.
Offering An Alternative
Aldrich Hall Partners provide founders and owners with a tailored growth and/or succession plan that preserves their vision while unleashing the power of scale. We bring outstanding businesses run by exceptional entrepreneurs together into scaled platform partnerships— making their day-jobs easier, enabling them to compete against new entrants, and giving them significant economic upside.
Founder-owners and their business legacies are our number one priority, and we are relentless in looking out for their best interests, whether that means creating a shared back-office to free up time to focus on the core business, developing a bullet-proof succession plan, or investing aggressively in technology and systems to make your team’s job easier.
Our Approach
Our thesis development involves rigorous industry analysis, on-the-field research with operating executives, and discovery work with founder-owners. We are dedicated exclusively to building platform partnerships in the lower-middle-market, with a focus on companies providing mission-critical business services.
We seek to uncover growing fragmented industry niches on the cusp of consolidation and to identify transformational growth and operating initiatives in these industries.
Once we have selected an industry niche, we design bespoke platform partnerships to empower independent founder-owners to exponentially increase their business’s potential.
Through our partnerships we provide fair valuations, tailored terms, flexibility on the level of involvement post-acquisition, and the option to retain a meaningful ownership stake and share in the value creation of the broader platform.
Through our platforms we augment access to talent, capitalize on economies of scale and scope, deploy cutting edge technologies, invest aggressively, and implement scaled shared back-office solutions
Investment Criteria: We Focus On Mission Critical Services
Industry
- Highly fragmented large addressable markets ($500 million+)
- High-visibility growth driven by irreversible secular trends
- Presence of economies of scale unlockable through a platform partnership
Business Models
- High value, recession resistant mission-critical services
- High quality, recurring revenue with low customer concentration
- Steady organic growth at or above industry average
Target Characteristics
- Headquartered in United States or Canada
- EBITDA / Operating Earnings of $250k+
- EBITDA Margin of 10%+
Our "Platform Partnership" Approach
- Structure: Option to sell anywhere from 51 - 100% of your stake in the company. Take some (or all) chips off the table and benefit from future growth.
- Legacy: Retain 100% of your brand, valued employees, and customers. We respect what you've built and won't change it.
- Role: Stay in your role, serve as c-suite executive in the platform, or plan for later retirement. You choose.
- Support: Benefit from shared back-office services so you can focus on the parts of the business you love.
- Network: Become part of a group of leading independent peers, gaining access to better talent, technology, and capital.
- Employee Ownership: We give a significant portion of our equity to your employees for free. We believe in investing in your people
Values: For Owners, By Owners
- Integrity: Doing what is right
- Transparency: Being transparent and honest with our partners
- Empathy: Understanding how hard you've worked to build your legacy
- Growth: Investing in the growth of our partners and their employees
- Work Ethic: Working hard to deliver on our promises