M&A advisory.
Bristlecone Trail Partners offers mergers and acquisitions advisory services to help entrepreneurs sell their businesses (ie., sellside advisory), and we support a variety of clients to identify and execute acquisitions of new businesses (ie., buyside advisory).
Sellside advisory
We provide a differentiated approach to sellside advisory services for entrepreneurs and business owners with businesses in the $5 million to $100 million revenue range. We limit the number of client engagements we take on each year. We do this because we run a high-touch, structured process in order to maximize value and ensure you find the right partner. Our focus is industry agnostic; however, we specialize in matching sellers with private equity and private equity-backed partners. We coach you on the process, prepare and position your company for sale, procure a target buyer list, and make a market to help you assess your options and select the right partner. We are not volume focused. We are not business brokers. And we do not list businesses for sale.
Buyside advisory
We offer high-touch, targeted buyside advisory services to clients who are interested in growing their business through acquisition. We specialize in helping acquirers with formalizing their acquisition criteria, target outreach, pipeline building and prioritization, and transaction execution.
Other bespoke services
Review of strategic alternatives
Go-to-market preparation and coaching
Financial modeling
Firm valuation
Due diligence support
Transaction document review / input
Third-party independent opinion
Professional services.
We help firms add senior-level experience and expertise, fast. Bristlecone Trail Partners provides Corporate Development-as-a-Service (CDaaS), Strategy-as-a-Service (SaaS), and Finance-as-a-Service (FaaS).
It can be difficult to justify or rationalize adding a full-time, senior-level headcount to your organization or department. Recruiting is costly and turnover is even more expensive. Workload demand for certain roles is inconsistent, unpredictable, or project based. Why pay a senior-level person to “play in the sandbox” while waiting for substantive work? How can you flex your team’s bandwidth and capabilities without going through the trouble and commitment of hiring someone full-time? Bristlecone Trail Partners offers a variety of professional services to senior business leaders in finance, strategy, and corporate development to help you rapidly augment your team’s resources and capabilities. Our professional services are designed to help your organization or department be flexible and rapidly respond to unpredictable workload demands - value creation opportunities do not wait around. Our engagements can last as short as one day, extend for numerous months, or last a full year. Examples of customers we serve include: private equity firms and their portfolio companies, CEOs, CFOs/finance organizations, and strategy and corporate development leaders.
Principal investments.
We make select principal investments in businesses with $500,000 to $3 million of EBITDA. We are focused on industries with attractive characteristics, competitive dynamics, and trends. We prefer fragmented, asset-light industries where industry collaboration and team work can effect scale and yield superior business outcomes. Our investment thesis centers on investing in great people who have developed foundational businesses, and together we can to effect a step-change outcome in the business, yielding tremendous opportunities for employees, customers, vendors, and ultimately shareholders. We are keen on businesses with high-quality, honest, and passionate people. We love a history of revenue and earnings growth, healthy and consistent gross profit and EBITDA margins, passionate and loyal employees, a customer base with low concentration, and a five-star reputation with customers. We primarily make control investments (at least 50% plus 1) but will entertain minority investments with the right people and companies. We offer a compelling liquidity event for business owners looking to take some chips off the table, but who are no longer interested in taking the journey alone.