Independent Sponsor · Lower-Middle-Market Acquisitions
You’ve spent your career building someone else’s business. It’s time to own your own. We help you from start to close.
SEE Opus Capital is an independent sponsor pursuing established lower-middle-market businesses. We work a proprietary sourcing network, we carry the transaction experience, and we have the capital relationships to fund a qualified acquisition. What we are looking for is the executive to own and run it — someone ready to move from running someone else’s company to owning one.
What We’re Buying
Established businesses that need their next owner-operator.
Our focus is the U.S. lower middle market: durable, cash-generating businesses where the next chapter depends on capable leadership, disciplined execution and a thoughtful ownership transition. If your experience lines up with the profile below, we should be talking.
- Industrials
- Business Services
- Healthcare
- Logistics
- Manufacturing
- Infrastructure
- Telecom
- Distribution
Company-specific details are shared once an opportunity has been screened and confidentiality is in place.
What the Operator Gets
This is an ownership path, not an executive search.
You bring operating leadership. We bring the transaction infrastructure around it. The objective is to put the right executive in a position to own, operate and participate in the value they create.
Sourced opportunities, not a solo search
We are not asking you to spend two years hunting for a company on your own. Our network surfaces opportunities in the sectors above. When an operator’s experience is central to why a business is worth buying, that operator becomes part of the investment thesis rather than a hire made after the fact.
Capital and transaction structure
SEE Opus assembles the equity and the debt. You are not expected to fund the purchase price. Capital partners do want the operator to have economic exposure in the deal, and that expectation varies by partner and by transaction. What matters to a capital partner is meaningful exposure relative to your own position, not a threshold dollar amount. Where an operator has the capability without the accumulated capital, there are legitimate ways to build that exposure: an investment calibrated to what is meaningful for you, a portion of the sponsor’s economics reallocated, co-investment financed against future distributions, equity earned in against defined performance, or compensation converted into ownership. These are real costs paid in a form other than cash at closing, and we will walk you through them plainly and early rather than late.
Ownership economics
You hold equity in the business you run — typically some purchased at close on the terms negotiated for the transaction, and incentive equity earned against the value you create. This is designed around ownership, not a salaried seat with a bonus attached. Structure and vesting are set deal-by-deal and put in front of you before you commit.
A sponsor beside you
You are not expected to learn acquisition finance, diligence, lender management and governance alone. We remain involved through transaction execution and the ownership journey.
We are not looking for executives who need to be convinced to become owners. We are looking for leaders already thinking, “I want to own and run a company—how do I get there?”
That’s MeWhy SEE Opus
You should know who is sitting on the other side of the table.
Leaving a senior corporate role for ownership is a consequential decision, and you are entitled to know who is asking you to make it. SEE Opus is a consortium of independent sponsors who have done this work for decades — sourcing, financing, closing and then living with the result. Additional sponsors are joining the group through the balance of the year.
Kevin Sample
Former Managing Director of the Erasmus Advisors Co-Investment Fund and previously in senior fixed-income and equity sales roles at TIAA-CREF. More than 25 years as an active independent sponsor.
Janice Thompson
Background spanning the Federal Reserve Bank, Goldman Sachs Investment Banking Division, corporate finance and more than 25 years across lower-middle-market private-equity diligence, independent sponsorship and portfolio-company leadership.
Ken Lewis
Ken has 30 years of experience in deal sourcing, capital partnerships and deal structuring in consumer products, financial services, biotechnology, telecommunications, health care, insurance and manufacturing. He is a graduate of Duke University and Harvard Law School.
Operator Interest
If you already know you want to own and run a business, start here.
Send us enough background to understand what you have run, the results you have produced, the industries you know and the ownership path you are seeking.
We are not asking you to quit your job or commit to a deal. The first step is simply determining whether there is a plausible fit between your experience and the opportunities we are pursuing.