[ Investment Criteria ]
We Don't Collect
Logos. We Build
Companies.
Augeo Capital partners with founder-led businesses in the lower middle market that have outgrown their current chapter — and need more than a wire transfer to write the next one.
[ The Numbers ]
At a Glance
[ Target Revenue ]
$10 – $250M
[ Target EBITDA ]
$3 – $50M+
[ Equity Investment ]
$10 – $100M+
[ Transaction Types ]
Buyouts · Recaps · Founder Transitions
[ Geography ]
United States
[ Structure ]
Control preferred. Flexible where it matters.
We publish our criteria because we respect your time. If it's not a fit, you'll know in thirty seconds. If it is — let's talk.
[ What We Look For ]
Companies Worth Owning
We're not pattern-matching to a spreadsheet. But the businesses we invest in tend to share a few things in common.
Niche dominance in a fragmented market
We want the company that competitors lose sleep over — the one with pricing power, deep customer relationships, and a reputation built over decades, not quarters. Market share matters less than market position. If you're the clear first call in your niche market, we're interested.
Revenue you can set your watch to
Recurring contracts. Mission-critical services. Embedded workflows your customers would need a crowbar to rip out. We look for businesses where revenue isn't a hope — it's a commitment already made by the people who pay you.
Real margins, not adjusted ones
We've seen enough "adjusted EBITDA" bridges to last a lifetime. We want businesses with strong gross margins, genuine operating leverage, and unit economics that actually hold up when you take the add-backs out. Capital-light models get extra attention.
No single point of failure
One customer isn't a business. It's a dependency. We look for diversified revenue across customers, end-markets, and geographies — businesses that don't crater when one relationship changes.
Demand that doesn't need a tailwind
We invest in businesses driven by non-discretionary spending, regulatory requirements, or structural shifts that persist through cycles. If your revenue depends on the economy being good, we're probably not the right partner.
[ Sectors ]
Where We Go Deep
We don't pretend to know every industry. We invest where we have conviction, pattern recognition, and the operating playbook to back it up.
[ Business Services ]
Outsourced, compliance-driven, and operationally complex services where deep domain expertise creates real switching costs and barriers to entry. Think workforce solutions, regulatory services, and back-office infrastructure that companies can't afford to get wrong.
[ Industrial & Specialty Services ]
Asset-light service businesses operating in regulated, mission-critical, or high-consequence environments. The harder it is to do the work safely and compliantly, the more interested we are.
[ Technology-Enabled Services ]
Services businesses that use proprietary technology or platforms to deliver better outcomes, not pure software plays. We want tech as the wedge that drives margin expansion and customer stickiness.
[ Specialty Manufacturing & Production ]
Niche manufacturers where process know-how, customer relationships, customized solutions, and equipment expertise create durable competitive advantages. Think print and mail, corrugated box converters, dental labs — businesses where the product is specialized, the customer base is sticky, and scale rewards operators who sweat the details.
[ Value Creation ]
What Happens After the Wire
Capital is the beginning, not the plan. Here's what we actually do.
Professionalize without sterilizing
Most lower middle market businesses are run on instinct, relationships, and tribal knowledge. That's what made them great. We build the systems — financial reporting, KPI infrastructure, talent frameworks — that let those instincts scale. We don't replace what works. We make it repeatable.
Grow the top line, not just the margin
We invest real dollars into sales, marketing, and market expansion. New verticals. New geographies. New customer segments. We're not here to cut our way to a return — we're here to build a company worth more because it's actually bigger, better, and faster.
Buy-and-build with discipline
Add-on acquisitions in fragmented markets are our bread and butter. But we don't do roll-ups for the sake of a pitch deck. Every acquisition has to make the platform stronger, not just larger. We source, diligence, negotiate, and integrate — and we've done it enough times to know what breaks.
Strengthen the bench, keep the culture
We don't parachute in a new CEO on day one. We work with the leaders who built the business and fill gaps where they exist — whether that's a CFO, a VP of Sales, or an advisory board with real operating experience. The goal is augmentation, not replacement.
Position for a premium exit
From day one, we're building a company that the next buyer — whether strategic or sponsor — will pay a premium for. That means institutional-quality reporting, clean operations, diversified growth, and a story that sells itself.
[ Partners ]
Is This You?
We've learned that the best deals start with alignment — not just on price, but on what happens next. If any of the following sounds familiar, we should talk.
Founders who've built something real
You've spent years getting to this point. You're not looking to hand over the keys. You want partial liquidity, a thought partner, and the resources to go from $20M to $100M, or from $100M to $500M. We get it, because that's exactly the partnership we're designed for.
Leaders who've hit the ceiling
Your team is strong. Your market is there. But you need capital for acquisitions, technology to modernize operations, a more articulated go-to-market strategy supported by a larger sales and marketing team, or simply the bandwidth to think beyond next quarter. We bring all four.
Owners planning a transition
Retirement, generational succession, or just a new chapter. You want a partner who'll respect the culture, retain the people, and protect the brand you've built. We take that seriously, because the alternative — the horror stories about PE — is exactly what we exist to disprove.
Businesses at an inflection point
You've been profitable for years. Now there's an opportunity — a tuck-in acquisition, a new market, a step-change investment — that's too big to fund from cash flow alone. That's where we come in.
[ Get in Touch ]
Let's Skip the Posturing
If you're a business owner, operator, or intermediary and what you've read here resonates — reach out. We respond to every serious inquiry, we move quickly, and we'll tell you within a week whether there's a fit.
No twelve-page NDAs. No six-month process to get a first meeting. Just a conversation between people who take this work seriously.
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