What’s the firm’s origin story?
Atlasview Equity officially launched in 2020, but the firm’s origins date back to over a decade ago. It all started when I left Deloitte to launch my own consulting firm to help businesses scale growth through digital channels. My firm worked with over 300+ clients, ranging from YC-backed startups to large publicly traded companies. I had clients that raised large rounds of venture financing, went public on the NASDAQ, and were acquired for billions of dollars.
Along the way I started to invest, both my own and my family’s money, across different asset classes, building a portfolio of real estate, public equities and private companies (including investments in my consulting clients). I’ve always been passionate about investing so it was only natural for me to transition my consulting firm to an investment firm. I developed a thesis around software and technology after seeing the massive success of several of my clients. The combination of having both operating and investing experience is what gives Atlasview its competitive edge in the lower-middle market.
What is your investment thesis or value proposition?
We invest in software, tech-enabled services and other asset-light B2B businesses with a high degree of recurring revenue. We look for businesses with products/services that are mission-critical, and have high switching costs resulting in high customer retention rates. These businesses have strong pricing power, low on-going capex and thus generate a large amount of discretionary free cash flow. In the lower middle market, there are a lot of these types of businesses that are too large for individual buyers, but too small for traditional private equity groups. This represents an attractive opportunity for an entrepreneurial acquirer like Atlasview.
Post acquisition, we focus our efforts on working alongside management to implement the Atlasview Playbook. The first year is dedicated to organic improvements to the business: best practices for sales/marketing, optimizing financial/cash management, implementing offshore teams and improving pricing strategies. From there, we shift focus to M&A, helping management source, negotiate and close add-on acquisitions.
Any notable differentiators for the firm?
We are sector specialists. Our niche focus gives us both a knowledge edge and an operational edge. We know exactly what to look for in a quality software/technology business and how to add value, giving us conviction in driving returns for investors. It also enables us to move quickly and identify key risks efficiently.
We are a founder-first investment firm. We take great care of customers & employees and strive to be great stewards of the founder’s legacy. We set up the team with the right tools and resources required to maximize the business to its full potential.
We believe in transparency. We don’t just say that, we show it by openly sharing our playbook, our learnings and experiences via our weekly newsletter, Atlasview Insights. This way founders/business owners know exactly what to expect if they decide to work with us.
We choose quality over quantity. We know exactly what types of businesses we want to own and can add value to. This is evidenced by our 100% close ratio on all our signed LOIs. We stand behind our offers and plan to manage only a small concentrated portfolio of companies. This allows us to spend more time building each company and setting them up for success.
What are you looking for, and where are you seeing opportunities?
We are looking for businesses that are generating between $1m to $5m in EBITDA, or at least $5m+ in ARR and are headquartered in Canada or the US.
Generally, we prefer bootstrapped businesses. We are seeing a ton of opportunities in owners looking to retire, or to transition out of the business. We also see some opportunities in VC land as well. Companies that aren’t growing fast enough to raise their next round of funding, but have built impressive software and a sticky client base. Carve outs also represent an area of opportunity we are pursuing. There are lots of strategics that have acquired software/technology businesses, that have since realized that it wasn’t a great fit, and want to divest to shore up some cash.
Finally, can you regale us with an interesting or funny M&A story?
During diligence for one of our deals, we were interviewing management from Australia. Now they obviously speak English down under too, but there are some key nuances that really threw us off. For example, they answer with “yeah nah” when they mean no, and “nah yeah” when they mean yes. So you can imagine how confusing this was when asking diligence questions!
“Just want to confirm, are these numbers accurate?”
“Nah…yeah.”
