Trivest Partners
The Firm
Trivest has spent more than forty-five years, from Coral Gables, Florida with offices in Charlotte, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, and Toronto, buying exactly one kind of company: founder- and family-owned businesses. The exclusivity is the identity, and the firm runs four funds tuned to different sizes of them. There is a mid-market fund, a growth fund where founders keep majority ownership, a Discovery fund for small companies in fragmented industries, and a Recognition fund for founder companies already scaling.
Two of its own commitments explain how it wins deals against other bidders. The Trivest Promise is to close at the price in the letter of intent, a direct answer to the re-trade reputation private equity carries with founders. And its Path to 3x materials describe the playbook after close: professionalize, add locations, and let the founder stay as involved as they want, without an imposed operating-partner layer.
For a searcher, Trivest matters twice over. Its Discovery fund hunts in the same fragmented trades an individual buyer does, pool service, pest control, auto repair, cleaning, pet boarding, so it is a frequent other bidder. And because it will take a minority stake, it is also the offer a conflicted seller takes instead of selling outright, which kills deals a searcher thought were exclusive. Anyone meeting the firm should know the founder-only thesis, the four-fund structure, and the LOI-price promise, because all three come up in the first conversation.
What It Buys
Coral Gables, FL. Founder- and family-owned businesses only, and it will take a minority stake rather than force a full sale. The widest small-business footprint here: pool service, pest control, auto, and cleaning.
Selling to them one day, or watching them as the other bidder? Track them in the Contact Book so the relationship has a next-touch date.
Confirmed Deals
5 deals traced to announcements by Trivest Partners, 2022 to 2026, newest first. Firms that announce every deal show a fuller run here than firms that report acquisitions as quarterly counts, so read this as the evidence that clears the bar rather than as the firm's whole record.
- AquaVerse · June 16, 2026
A pool-service platform launched with eight local brands across Florida, Georgia, and Tennessee, each keeping its own name.
- Alta Pest Control · April 30, 2024
Residential and commercial pest control, a minority growth partnership from Trivest's non-control fund.
- Pet Resort Hospitality Group · April 18, 2023
The boarding-and-daycare platform formed with Queens Court, at seventeen locations across five brands.
- OpenRoad · September 6, 2022
A collision-repair platform formed with LP First Capital from four Southwest shops, twelve centers at launch.
- Office Pride · March 15, 2022
A commercial-cleaning franchisor of 145-plus locations, backed to roughly double its unit count with the founder still leading.