Trivest Partners

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Trivest Partners LP (or "Trivest") was founded in 1981, and is one of the oldest private equity firms in the Southeastern United States. The firm is headquartered in Miami, Florida, with regional business development professionals in Charlotte, Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles, New York, and Toronto. Trivest is a private investment firm that focuses exclusively on the support and growth of founder-led and family-owned businesses in the U.S. and Canada. The firm has multiple dedicated investment approaches, each with dedicated teams, including both majority and minority transactions, which provides ultimate flexibility for founders.

With four distinct fund strategies targeting both control and non-control investments across a broad spectrum of the lower-middle market, Trivest provides a comprehensive offering for Founders seeking partnership and/or an ownership transition of their business. Trivest uses a flexible and collaborative approach to deal execution (“The Trivest Promise”) which has built significant trust in the Trivest brand among Founders and has contributed to a high volume of investment activity. The firm averages roughly 50 closed transactions each year.

Trivest has been innovative among our peers in the private equity universe. Trivest sets itself apart from other firms through its proactive, differentiated deal sourcing methodologies; its flexible approach to deal negotiations/due diligence; and “Path to 3x”, a proprietary value creation methodology offered to each business post-closing.

We introduce the “Trivest Promise” to Founders in our initial conversation. This is the embodiment of our commitment to Founder/Family-Owned business, which comes to life through a list of principles we call, affectionately, "Just Say No!" We work hard to eliminate the typical pain points for a founder by encouraging them to say “No” to things that can derail a transaction; Things like re-trading (we will close at the price in our LOI), financing contingencies (we can close all-equity), aggressive capital structures (we use senior-only debt with ~50% equity), and required Founder rollover (reinvestment is the Founder’s choice), among others.

Post-closing, Trivest have developed a time-tested, systematic approach to value creation we call the “Path to 3x.” Said simply, for every dollar that we invest on behalf of our investors, we endeavor to return three or more. This process is introduced to our portfolio company management teams even prior to our investment and serves as a playbook for each Company throughout the life our investment period. History has proven that if a business excels at each of the six key tenants of the “Path to 3x” — becoming a Category of One, Organic Growth, Topgrading, Performance Management, Add-On Acquisitions, and the Value Creation Checklist — it has an excellent chance of achieving 3x+ growth.