Serent Capital Named to Inc.’s 2023 List of Founder-Friendly Investors for Fifth Consecutive Year

Serent Capital Named to Inc.’s 2023 List of Founder-Friendly Investors for Fifth Consecutive Year

Five-time honoree, Serent, has been recognized for its approach to partnering with founder-led companies

October 31, 2023

Serent Capital, a growth-focused private equity firm that invests in founder-led B2B SaaS and technology companies, announced today it has been recognized on Inc.’s Founder-Friendly Investors list for the fifth consecutive year. The list honors the private equity and venture capital firms with the best track records of success backing entrepreneurs.

Serent was founded in 2008 to help exceptional, bootstrapped companies scale through a hands-on operational approach. The firm recently celebrated its 15th Anniversary, and its vision to help founder-led companies remains true.

“As a firm founded by founders for founders, we have immense admiration for these leaders who choose to embark on the challenging journey of entrepreneurship,” said Lance Fenton, Partner at Serent Capital. “Through years of experience, we’ve become experts in navigating the unique challenges that come with building a market-leading company, and it’s an honor to partner with these visionary founders and turn them into category leaders.”

Serent’s in-house Growth Team includes twenty-plus former operators and management consultants who work directly with the portfolio company leaders on strategic initiatives related to go-to-market, embedded finance and payments integration, product and technology, product marketing and pricing, transformative M&A, and executive talent recruiting. Using Serent’s proven playbooks, more than 60 founder-led B2B software and tech-enabled service companies have seen an average of 30% growth year-over-year in the first 2 years.

“When we choose to invest, it’s with the utmost respect for what makes that company unique – its customers, its employees, its culture. We’re not just investors; we’re partners, committed to helping the companies scale successfully,” said Stewart Lynn, Partner at Serent Capital. “Through our in-house Growth Team, we work hands-on with our founders to identify and execute strategic initiatives to accelerate growth and help these great companies build on the founders’ visions.”

“Now more than ever, founder-led companies need financing partners that offer guidance, expertise, and understanding—not just capital. These are the private equity, venture capital, and debt firms that have founders’ backs when it comes to accelerating growth,” says Scott Omelianuk, editor-in-chief of Inc. Business Media.

Serent has $5 billion of assets under management and offices in Austin, Texas, and San Francisco, California. Most recently, the firm invested in BS&A, a leading ERP software for municipalities and LinkIt, a K-12 software company.  In addition to being recognized as a founder-friendly firm, Serent has been recognized as a Top Private Equity Firm by Growth Cap and a Top Private Equity Innovator by BluWave this year. To learn more about how Serent partners with founders, visit: https://serentcapital.com/founders/.

Introduced in 2019, the Founder-Friendly Investors list has become a go-to guide for entrepreneurs who want to grow their companies while retaining an ownership stake. To compile the list, Inc. went straight to the source: entrepreneurs who have sold to private equity and venture capital firms. Founders filled out a questionnaire about their experiences partnering with private equity, venture capital, and debt firms and shared data on how their portfolio companies have grown during these partnerships.

The November 2023 issue of Inc. magazine is available online now at https://www.inc.com/magazine and will be on newsstands beginning October 31. To see the complete list, go to: https://www.inc.com/founder-friendly-investors/2023

Inc.’s Founder-Friendly Private Equity Firms list is based on the criteria that the private equity firm has exited U.S.-based, founder-led, portfolio companies. Serent paid a fee to accept and distribute the results of such award. Serent’s receipt of this award is in no way indicative of any individual client or investor’s experience with Serent or of the future performance of any investment. For more information on the GrowthCap and BluWave awards, please refer to the respective links provided here and here.

Serent Capital invests in growing businesses that have developed compelling solutions that address their customers' needs. As those businesses grow and evolve, the opportunities and challenges that they face change with them. Principals at Serent Capital have firsthand experience at capturing those opportunities and navigating these difficulties through their experiences as CEOs, strategic advisors, and board members to successful growing businesses. By bringing its expertise and capital to bear, Serent seeks to help growing businesses thrive. Learn more about our portfolio companies.

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