The Buyers
Buying Directly From Owners
Each firm here is two things at once: the other bidder on the business you want, and the buyer you would eventually sell to. Every deal is traced to the firm's own announcement.
- Trivest Partners · Coral Gables, FL
Founder- and family-owned businesses only, and it will buy a minority stake rather than force a full sale. The widest small-business footprint of any firm here: pool service, pest control, auto, and cleaning all at once.
Active in: Pool Service Business, Pest Control Business, Auto Repair Shop, Commercial Cleaning Business
- Align Capital Partners · Cleveland, OH and Dallas, TX
Industrial and professional services, software, and specialty manufacturing. Buys a platform, then bolts on steadily rather than in bursts.
Active in: Landscaping Business
- Kian Capital · Charlotte, NC
Lower-middle-market, founder-partnership oriented. Its landscaping platform has nearly tripled revenue since 2021, mostly by buying.
Active in: Landscaping Business
- The Sterling Group (Foundation Fund) · Houston, TX
A large industrial firm's small-company fund. Worth watching because it brings big-firm capital to businesses a searcher would consider.
Active in: Landscaping Business
- Shoreline Equity Partners · Tampa, FL
Services businesses: roofing, landscaping, pool, paving, water treatment. Close to the trades a first-time buyer actually looks at.
Active in: Roofing Company
- Boyne Capital · Miami, FL
Founder-owned lower-middle-market companies, weighted toward services. Explicitly courts owners who are still running the business.
Active in: Commercial Cleaning Business, Roofing Company
- Prospect Partners · Chicago, IL
Calls its target the pre-middle market, which is genuinely small: the range where a self-funded searcher is a real rival bidder. Fund V closed at $225M.
Active in: MSP
- Fort Point Capital · Boston, MA
Service businesses, including the unglamorous infrastructure trades. Its sewer platform buys plumbing companies outright.
Active in: Plumbing Business
Who Buys From Searchers at Exit
The other end of the journey. Entries appear only when both sides verify: the company's search-fund origin and the buyer's own announcement.
- Rentokil Initial ↗
The global pest-control consolidator. Its North American arm buys route-density service companies, including one built by searchers.
Vector Disease Control International (2017): Jay Davis and Jason Pananos raised the Nashton Partners search fund in 2008 and bought VDCI, a Little Rock mosquito-control company, then made 14 add-on acquisitions; Rentokil announced the purchase of the roughly $47M-revenue company in November 2017 as its largest North American deal since Steritech. [1][2]
- JMI Equity ↗
Growth equity for software companies. The buyer in one of the search world's canonical exits.
Raptor Technologies (2018): Jim Vesterman's Liberty Place Capital search fund acquired Raptor in 2012; the 2018 sale to JMI returned a reported 13.5x to his search investors, and the company later traded onward at a reported $1.8B valuation. [1][2]
By Industry
Who Is Buying in Your Industry maps these firms trade by trade with their deals, and each industry guide names its confirmed buyers.