About Us

Having worked in the traditional private equity world, we believed there was a better way and set out to build a different kind of company. In fact, we debated whether we should even call ourselves a private equity firm. We ultimately decided on using the “private equity” label but want to share how we are different in several important ways.

We are not financial engineers who look solely at their portfolio through the lens of spreadsheets, EBITDA margins, IRR calculations, and leverage ratios. We have an operator’s mindset. Our partners have significant operating experiences as Division Presidents, CEOs and Board Chairs in over a dozen private-equity backed, private, and publicly traded companies. We know the issues facing owners and CEOs and are comfortable rolling up our sleeves and utilizing our expertise to help solve problems and grow their business.

We have significant direct private equity investing experience – over $480 million in ten platform companies across multiple cycles – producing robust financial returns. We have honed our core institutional processes, including our acquisition and operating playbooks, over the last two decades.

Growth is an important driver of financial returns. We believe growth in a service company requires a strong commitment to employees, an intense focus on the delivering a superior customer experience, a solid plan defining future success, and a drive to execute and continuously improve. This is the foundation for long term, sustainable growth and where we focus our attention.

Our primary mission is to partner with like-minded owners and management teams to build great companies. This is what excites us and the reason we founded our company. We enjoy developing close, collegial relationships with owners and management teams and collaborating on creating their futures. We are confident that building great companies generates superior financial returns.

Many private equity firms classify themselves as generalists and invest in an incredibly broad set of industries where they participate. We have a laser-like focus on home service and specialty business service companies that are distinguished as having several of the following characteristics:

• route-based logistics,
• a key or differentiated asset,
• essential service,
• local or regional operations (often with a warehouse),
• rental or recurring revenue streams, and
• strong local brands.

We possess deep domain expertise and proven experience in these types of business models.

We believe in providing our investors greater control. We do not ask them to invest blindly into a fund with a loosely defined thesis. Instead, our investors have the opportunity to deploy their capital on a company-by-company basis. We provide them comprehensive due diligence and allow them to pick and choose where to invest. Yes, this approach requires much more work on our part, but as investors ourselves, that’s what we would want.

We are patient in our approach. Relieved of the pressures of investing a large fund, we can take the time to develop strong relationships with prospective management teams to ensure they share our vision in how to build great service companies.

Grove Mountain Partners: Unconventional private equity for those seeking a differentiated approach.