History
We are highly experienced corporate leaders and business people, who hate politics and love straight talking people. Fundamentally we are people who get things done; considering ourselves doers who think.
Having ran and owned businesses ranging from start ups, with a handful of people, to large scale international businesses with thousands of staff and hundreds of millions in revenue.
However we believe the business fundamentals are the same no matter the size of the business.
Each of us have over 25 years of business experience, ranging from start ups, turnarounds, business growth, international expansion and most recently in digitally focused companies .
We like to consider ourselves experts at sales and marketing, and thought we would bring all this experience and knowledge together to become investors and stewards of SME companies, helping them get to the next level.
what is the next level ?
Companies who reach a level that attract trade and PE buyers, who sell for higher multiples on their higher profits.
The Team
Founding Partner
Stephen Kennedy
Steve is a highly experienced commercial corporate leader, and entrepreneur. He has owned and managed businesses across a range of sectors, including, banking, insurance, hospitality technology, fin tech, engineering, construction and distribution. Steve has operated internationally all across Europe, Asia and the Americas at FTSE 250 main board level with hundreds of millions of sales and thousands of employees AND as a entrepreneur in the SME space. As an ex banker he has a head for numbers and considers his key skills as "commerciality and an ability to set a clear strategy and translate that strategy into realisable action" .
Steve is a no nonsense, straight talking Glaswegian who has a passion for all things business, and who hates company politics and artificial harmony .
Founding Partner
Mike Kneafsey
Mike has 30 years of experience spanning multiple sectors, ranging from banking to support services to digital technology. He says "The connecting element is a focus on people and clients and being passionate about the culture a business creates to allow the team to perform to their maximum potential". Over the past 5 years he has provided non-exec advisory services to SME businesses.
Most of his career has involved significant leadership roles, leading teams of up to 6000 colleagues with a focus on B2B sales management and value proposition development being central to commercial delivery. His approach is to simplify the fog and to find the formula that works and then repeat it. A big part of this is identifying talent in a business and motivating that talent to drive exponential performance improvement.
Partner - US region
Tim Haig
Tim is a businessman with over 35 years business experience in multi-sectors and 12 countries. He wants to live in a world where companies truly walk the talk with customers by building trust, personalising experiences and earning loyalty.
Tim is passionate about business and digital efficiency and particularly giving people and organisations the tools to control, access and create mutual value from data.
Tim's career has included leadership roles such as Sales Director, Operations and Service Director, Division General Manager, Regional Director, Director Data Strategy and Founder and during these times was recognised with awards in UK Call Centre of the Year and European Service Business of the Year.
Partner - US region
Greg Mazza
Greg is an innovative, results-driven leader and futurist who brings extensive experience in business transformation and growth with extensive experience in automotive, financial services, advertising, med-tech and insurance. Greg has been responsible for global insurance carrier strategic innovation, financial services organizational performance transformation, new vehicle program implementation, highly differentiated integrated marketing campaigns and non-traditional, comprehensive consumer behavior analytics, all while delivering P&L results. Greg has conceived, mentored and advised several fintech, Insurtech, automotive and social engagement startups from inception to launch whilst holding an MBA from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and an Advanced Degree (MS) as well as a BSEE in Bio-Medical / Electrical Engineering from The Ohio State University.
Partner
Alex Raubitschek
Alex is an experienced and trusted advisor to the Human Capital services industry. With over 20 years’ exposure to this area he has been intrinsically involved in the originating, development and exiting of businesses, while also holding elected office in one of London’s largest local authorities.
After graduating in Applied Chemistry, Alex worked in the media and publishing industry before embarking on a career in recruitment. As a Board Director of a leading Marketing recruitment firm he helped take the business to market and ultimately to sale via a private equity vehicle.
He has subsequently sat on the Board of several Private Equity portfolio businesses and has managed various funds to initiate recruitment related start ups. Additionally, Alex was involved in facilitating the relationship between Hamilton Bradshaw and local government for the Start-up Loans venture. He offers a strategic and operational value add to high growth and high premium businesses.
Partner - BUSINESS OPERATIONS & DELIVERY
Mark Garrett
Mark started on the shop floor over 20 years ago and has risen to lead some of the most recognisable brands into retail.
Following his role as a member of the original Management Team of video game retailer Gamestation. Mark went on to bring the US AV brand Bose to the UK High St through an unprecedented dealer/brand partnership. Followed by a time at Dixons Retail where we created innovative B2B propositions for brands such as Apple, HP and Microsoft.
Mark has worked for the past 8 years helping SME find growth through Digital coupling technical knowhow with commercial nouse.