Does anyone know any PE firm(s) with an interest in SaaS?

July 20, 2023

by a searcher from The University of Michigan - Stephen M. Ross School of Business in Columbus, OH, USA

We're searchers and in talks with a SaaS company to purchase them. They're $4.4m in ARR, likely looking at around a $24m to $28m purchase price. Our group has extensive experience in starting, building, and scaling SaaS companies. So far we've been looking at a lot of traditional lower middle market companies with PE firms, but haven't networked with any that are interested in SaaS... Does anyone have any recommendations on groups to discuss the deal with that could have interest in contributing capital?

Reply by a searcher
from University of Southern California in Atlanta, GA, USA

Thanks ^redacted‌. You should be able to find a lot of PE and late stage VC's interested in SaaS, if not all of them. Without knowing you or your deal, I would focus on firms with specific appetite in your vertical. Can figure this out with a web search typically. Cold intros into established PE is hard, use your network to get warm intros if you can. I always relied on the fellow operators (often my vendors or mid sized founders) in the space who raised capital before me, they knew a lot.

Reply by an investor
from University of Pennsylvania in New York, NY, USA

Happy to chat - I’ve been investing in SaaS for 15 years and have worked alongside many software PE sponsors. This will be too small for many of the larger guys like a Thoma or Vista so would focus on LMM guys that would be okay with minority or majority control. Names like Frontier and K1 come mind in addition to names mentioned above. Feel free to shoot me an email or dm redacted

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