Investment will further advance commercialization of renewable hydrogen and sustainable aviation fuels from biomass and waste

WASHINGTON and PINEDALE, Wyo. , July 25, 2023 — RockCreek, a leading global multi-asset firm investing in the energy transition, announced the closing of an investment in Raven SR, Inc. (Raven SR), a company that produces high-value renewable transportation fuels from a variety of feedstocks, including waste streams, using a proprietary non-combustion process.

Raven SR will use RockCreek’s investment to further commercialize low-to-negative carbon intensity hydrogen and sustainable aviation fuel (SAF). This investment comes on the heels of last month’s announcement that Raven SR’s Richmond, Calif. project is the first ever biomass-to-renewable hydrogen project permitted in the state of California.

Renewable hydrogen from this project will be commercially available in the Bay Area beginning in 2024 through agreements with Chevron New Energies and Hyzon Motors. The same core technology will also be adapted to commercialize the production of sustainable aviation fuel in 2025.

The Raven SR investment is part of RockCreek’s Smart Aviation Futures fund. Working with a major US airline, Smart Aviation Futures invests in high-growth companies that enable and benefit from decarbonizing the aviation industry. Airlines are looking to both sustainable aviation fuel and hydrogen as key energy transition tools. Smart Aviation Futures taps into tailwinds from billions of dollars in opportunities unlocked globally by policy measures like the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act, and will target investments in companies aligned with corporate and consumer preferences for reducing environmental footprints. Supportive public policy initiatives and high demand for SAF are encouraging investors to expand in the space, leading to project development in regions across the world.

“Raven SR is pioneering innovative ways to produce renewable transportation fuels that will play an instrumental role in decarbonizing the aviation and transportation industries,” said Justin Heyman, managing director of RockCreek. “Their products have an attractive environmental footprint and are cost competitive with traditional fuels. This offers industries smart options to both manage fuel costs and achieve abatement goals.”

“RockCreek’s investment in Raven SR signals the investing community’s confidence that our patented Steam/CO₂ Reforming technology will have a significant impact on reducing carbon emissions through the production of carbon-neutral and carbon-negative fuels,” said Matt Murdock, CEO of Raven SR. “With the demand for sustainable aviation fuel and renewable hydrogen rapidly on the rise, RockCreek’s support will play a vital role in advancing the development and expansion of our global business model.”

The Raven SR technology is a non-combustion thermal, chemical reductive process that converts organic waste and landfill gas to hydrogen and Fischer-Tropsch synthetic fuels. Unlike other hydrogen production technologies, its Steam/CO₂ Reformation does not require fresh water as a feedstock and uses less than half the energy of electrolysis. The process is more efficient than conventional hydrogen production and can deliver fuel with low to negative carbon intensity. Additionally, Raven SR’s goal is to generate as much of its own power onsite as possible to reduce reliance on and/or be independent of the grid. Its modular design provides a scalable means to locally produce renewable hydrogen and synthetic liquid fuels from local waste.

About Raven SR

Raven SR, headquartered in Wyoming, transforms biomass, mixed municipal solid waste, bio-solids, sewage, medical waste, and natural or biogas into renewable fuels. Using its proprietary, non-combustion, non-catalytic Steam/CO2 Reformation technology, Raven SR dependably produces a hydrogen-rich syngas regardless of feedstock utilized. Raven SR, led by co-founders Matt Murdock and Matt Scanlon, is committed to adding value to local resources and communities while responsibly reducing greenhouse gases and achieving a low carbon economy. By using modular systems and producing low air emissions, their systems can be located closer to customers and feedstock, creating local fuel from local waste for local mobility.

Visit https://ravensr.com.

About RockCreek

RockCreek is a global multi-asset investment firm that applies innovation, data, and technology to sustainable investing. With over $15 billion in assets and decades of experience investing in the energy transition, health, mobility, affordable housing, fintech, and health, RockCreek partners with university endowments, foundations, pension plans, sovereign funds, and family offices to generate long-term value and make business and financial models more inclusive and sustainable. RockCreek’s private markets teams invest in early stage, growth, and late-stage companies, and its Outsourced Chief Investment Officer (OCIO) and multi-asset class teams invest with leading partners in hard to access opportunities, and emerging talent.

Visit therockcreekgroup.com, and follow us on LinkedIn. 

SOURCE Raven SR Inc.

NEW YORK, July 25, 2023 — Nirvana Water Sciences Corp. (“Nirvana”), an innovative wellness and functional beverage company, is pleased to announce a further investment of $2.625 million by Flagstaff International, Inc. and other current investors.

This investment will fuel the growth of Nirvana’s new functional spring waters and seltzers in traditional retail as well as support a new joint venture with Inspire Health Alliance, LLC, a pioneering health care service network with more than 1,500 physicians and surgeons across the U.S.

The joint venture will offer a line of a dietary supplements aimed at boosting and protecting lean muscle mass at a time when consumers need it most. The three-ounce Nirvana Super™ Pro shots are infused with three grams of myHMB^® Clear, Nirvana’s exclusive multi-patented water-soluble HMB muscle wellness ingredient, as well as other proprietary ingredients.

“Extensive research supports the significant health and wellness benefits of HMB. We believe the Nirvana Super™ Pro products with HMB will give our physicians another tool to help achieve better outcomes,” said Rick Salas, co-owner of Flagstaff International, Inc. and a managing partner of Inspire Health Alliance. “My partner, John Kang, and I were early investors in Nirvana and the company is now really hitting its stride. We believe the time is right for this additional investment and the joint venture with Inspire Health Alliance.”

Naji Abumrad, M.D., F.A.C.S., professor of surgery at the Vanderbilt School of Medicine, and chairman of Nirvana’s Scientific Advisory Board, is a world-renowned scientist and expert on systemic muscle inflammation and muscle wasting. Dr. Abumrad says, “When the body goes through trauma, like that experienced from surgery, it turns to the muscles to retrieve amino acids to rebuild. As a result, most patients experience muscle atrophy or sarcopenia at some level after surgery, which is one of the primary reasons why we started to study this issue in great depth over three decades ago. What we found was that supplementing with HMB can actually reverse muscle atrophy.”  

David Vanderveen, Nirvana’s CEO, added, “We couldn’t be more excited to partner with Inspire Health Alliance to help its physician network promote muscle wellness with our Nirvana Super™ Pro dietary supplement shots. This goes to the heart of what we do at Nirvana. We help people transform their bodies at a cellular level to live stronger, longer and more active lives.”  

To learn more, please visit www.feelsuper.pro 

About Nirvana Water Sciences Corp.

Nirvana is an innovative wellness company that helps people transform their bodies at a cellular level and live stronger, longer and active lives. Its core line of products consists of lightly-flavored pure mountain spring waters, seltzers, shots and supplements infused with science-backed ingredients, including the unique super-ingredient, myHMB^® Clear, a water-soluble form of HMB (βeta-hydroxy βeta-methylbutyrate), clinically supported to reduce muscle soreness, boost muscle recovery time, and support lean muscle mass production.

Learn more about our science, sourcing, sustainability, SKUs and success stories at www.feelsuper.com.     

About Inspire Health Alliance, LLC

Inspire Health Alliance, LLC is a health care services company that partners with physicians and other health care providers to improve patient outcomes, lower costs and reduce risks via innovative care models and technology solutions.

To learn more, visit www.inspirehealthalliance.com. 

Contact
Cathy Bergman I Director of Communications
Nirvana Water Sciences Corp.
Office 212.664.8949 l Cell 819.681.9643 l [email protected]

Andrew Meehan l President
Meehan Business Advisers for Inspire Health Alliance LLC
Cell 949.285.0759 l [email protected]  

SOURCE Nirvana Water Sciences Corp.

NEW YORK and LONDON, July 25, 2023 — Apera Asset Management LLP (Apera), a U.K.-based pan-European private debt manager in the mid-market space, and Kudu Investment Management, LLC (Kudu), a provider of permanent capital solutions to independent asset and wealth managers, today announced that Kudu has made a minority investment in Apera through an Apera affiliate. The firms are not disclosing financial terms.

Established in 2016, Apera specializes in providing private debt solutions to middle-market businesses, primarily in the U.K., Germany, Austria, Switzerland, France, Benelux, and the Nordic region. Apera manages more than €2.6 billion, or US$2.9 billion, in assets on behalf of institutional investors in Europe, Canada, and the United States. To date, funds managed and advised by Apera have made 60 investments in companies, mostly in the information technology, healthcare, consumer discretionary, and financial sectors.

Apera remains majority partner-owned and led by founding partners Klaus Petersen, David Wilmot and Robert Shaw. Apera and its affiliates have 38 employees in London, Munich, Paris and Luxembourg. Apera will use Kudu’s investment to accelerate the growth of its business, among other internal uses.

“The environment in Europe is receptive to credit solutions like Apera’s, and long-term prospects for European credit funds are highly promising,” Petersen said. “Kudu emerged as our preferred strategic partner when we began exploring paths to accelerate Apera’s growth initiatives and to diversify our client base. We value Kudu’s combination of flexible capital, broad industry knowledge, and global reach.”

Apera is Kudu’s third partnership in the U.K. and Europe. In 2018, Kudu invested in Fair Oaks Capital, a London-based alternative credit manager. In 2019, Kudu invested in London-based Warwick Capital Partners, a global special situations manager.

“Apera has built a well-positioned private credit platform in the U.K. and Europe with a talented team and a first-class operations profile,” said Rob Jakacki, Kudu CEO. “We’re delighted to partner with Klaus, David, Robert and the team to support Apera’s continued growth.”

Since it was founded in 2015, New York-based Kudu has invested in 25 asset and wealth managers located in the U.S., Canada, U.K., Europe and Australia. Kudu-affiliated asset and wealth managers now collectively invest approximately $94 billion, on behalf of individual and institutional investors worldwide in traditional and alternative strategies and market segments. Kudu’s capital partners are White Mountains Insurance Group, Ltd., Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company (MassMutual), and Martello Re. 

Debevoise & Plimpton LLP was legal counsel to Apera. Stephenson Harwood LLP served as legal advisor to Kudu.

About Apera Asset Management LLP
Established in 2016, Apera is a UK-based sponsor of funds acting as a pan-European middle-market private credit investor. It operates in the U.K., the DACH (Germany, Austria, Switzerland) region, the Nordic region, France and Benelux. The firm develops long-term partnerships with private equity investors, SME (small and midsize enterprise) borrowers, and advisors by providing tailored financial solutions that meet both the operational needs and growth objectives of clients, while seeking to produce superior returns. Apera is focused on bringing a new standard of transparency to the private debt market. For more information, visit www.apera-am.com and Apera Asset Management on LinkedIn.

About Kudu Investment Management
Kudu provides long-term capital solutions—including generational ownership transfers, management buyouts, acquisition and growth finance, as well as liquidity for legacy partners—to independent asset and wealth managers globally. Kudu was founded in 2015 and is backed by capital partners White Mountains Insurance Group, Ltd. (NYSE: WTM), MassMutual, and Martello Re. For more information, visit www.kuduinvestment.com and Kudu Investment Management on LinkedIn.

Media Contacts

For Apera
Charlotte Balbirnie/Caroline Villiers
Kepler Communications
+44 7989 528421
+44 7808 585184
[email protected]
[email protected]

For Kudu
Margaret Kirch Cohen/Richard Chimberg
Newton Park PR
+1 847-507-2229
+1 617-312-4281
[email protected]
[email protected]

SOURCE Kudu Investment Management, LLC

LONDON, July 25, 2023 — inploi, the talent attraction technology scale-up, has raised a £1.35m round to develop its growth team and accelerate the go-to-market (GTM) strategy for their Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) offering ahead of a planned expansion into the US.

inploi was founded in 2016 out of its founders’ shared frustration with the sub-par experience of using legacy HR tech to find and apply for job opportunities. Having transitioned from a labour marketplace to a SaaS platform, the company now employs a unique Software with a Service approach to help hirers source and recruit staff while transforming the candidate’s experience – making it as intuitive and frictionless as possible.

The company counts a number of high-profile enterprises amongst its customers, including wagamama, Haven, Butlin’s, and FTSE-listed Compass Group UK & Ireland. They are recently joined by Hong Kong HQ’d A.S. Watson Group, the world’s largest international health & beauty retailer.

Recruitment industry veterans turned angels Chris Nelson and Julia Ross participated in the round, along with Joshua Nott of Schmidt Futures, Ziyaad Aboobaker, a partner at 10x Value Partners, and a number of others.

inploi transitioned from a marketplace into an enterprise SaaS-model coming out of the pandemic, during which it made access to its platform free at a time when front line workers were being recognised as ‘essential’ to the economy, and harder to find. 

Aboobaker stated: “The inploi team exhibited amazing agility in pivoting their model to providing software as a service, and is now partnered with a growing number of major blue-chip brands. inploi’s solution is perfectly positioned to address one of the biggest challenges facing companies today – attracting the people they need to operate effectively in an historically tight labour market – bringing the latest technology to an outdated market ripe for innovation. I am excited to have invested again to support them on their scaling journey.”

The company – which has been described as building Shopify for hiring – is seeking to become the dominant platform powering the front-end hiring journey.

inploi CEO, Matt de le Hey, said: “We’re grateful to new and existing investors who have backed us as we switch gears from finding product-market fit to scaling. Our unique approach of augmenting and modernising existing systems rather than replacing them – in addition to the close relationships we develop with customers as an innovation partner – has yielded extraordinary results, leading to 100% of our customers renewing across multi-year agreements.  Over a million candidates have already engaged with our platform this year alone, submitting 500,000 applications to 34,000 jobs, filled more quickly with significantly less client spend.”

The company also places emphasis on its ability to cater to neuro-divergent audiences with a wide variety of educational and professional backgrounds and skill sets.

Alex Hanson-Smith, inploi’s CTPO and cofounder, said: “by tracking candidate activity from first contact with a brand through to the point of hire we’re able to use real performance data – all the way through the talent attraction funnel – to optimise conversion and refine attraction strategies. We’re increasingly using AI to empower humans to focus on the human aspects of hiring, with machines handling the rest. We also have a deep commitment to accessibility and fairness: it goes without saying that nobody should be barred from opportunities by recruitment processes that are inaccessible. Working with our partner accessiBe our careers hubs and applicant experiences are completely customisable by those with neurodivergency or different abilities, helping to broaden access to a more diverse pool of applicants.”

Photo – https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/2160115/Inploi_Co_founder_CEO.jpg
Logo – https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1777879/Inploi_Logo.jpg

SOURCE Inploi

SHANGHAI, July 24, 2023 — Panlin Capital, a leading venture capital firm focusing on Chinese technological innovation, announced the successful closing of its 12th RMB-denominated main fund, “Chengdu Panlin Xiangxu Fund”. This fund is the first established by Panlin Capital in Chengdu, and it is another highly institutionalized RMB fund established by Panlin Capital after its Shanghai Science and Technology Innovation Flagship Fund.

Panlin Chengdu Xiangxu Fund is a strategic move made by Panlin Capital in Chengdu against market trends, with the support of both new and old investors. In addition to reinvestments from entrepreneur-represented veteran investors, the fund has also garnered support from institutional investors such as government-guided funds, national master funds, market-based financial institutions, and listed companies. These include local Chengdu institutions such as the Chengdu Productivity Promotion Center, which is a municipal-level science and technology start-up angel investment guidance fund, Chengdu Science Service Group, as well as CICC Genesis, a national emerging industry venture capital fund. Listed companies like Luzhou Laojiao (000568) and Eurocrane (603966) are also among the supporters.

In recent years, the structure of investors in Panlin Capital has been continuously optimized, especially with a significant increase in the proportion of institutional investors in the Panlin Chengdu Xiangxu Fund. This is of milestone significance for Panlin Capital: with entrepreneur-represented veteran investors serving as the cornerstone, complemented by government-guided funds, the two form the basis of Panlin’s fund-raising efforts. On top of this, listed companies and financial institutions are also introduced. The support from these different types of investors validates Panlin’s capabilities in terms of returns, reinvestment, and investment matching with industries. All of this is the result of Panlin’s deep cultivation and professional accumulation in the field of technological innovation.

Li Yuhui, the founding managing partner of Panlin Capital, said: “I want to thank both our new and old investors for their trust and support, and for accompanying Panlin in supporting technological entrepreneurs to participate in the magnificent cause of national scientific and technological innovation. Over the past several years, Panlin has also accompanied and witnessed numerous science and technology enterprises growing into industry leaders, helped scientists successfully transition to entrepreneurs, and brought tremendous momentum to the translation of scientific research and industrial progress. We will continue to delve into the field of technological innovation, creating substantial returns for our investors while continuing to support the entrepreneurs among scientists.”

Panlin Chengdu Fund focuses on To B and technology fields, guided by demand and technology. It mainly invests in To B companies (software, intelligent equipment, industrial aggregation platforms) that meet the demand for cost reduction, efficiency improvement and quality enhancement of B-end, as well as hard technology enterprises that have autonomous control over domestic replacement or key technology (critical components, equipment category). As of now, the fund has completed investments in several tech projects including Percipio.XYZ, Chipanalog, Terapark, AIPlanck, Easylogic, Ruiyun Cold Chain, Ele007.com and O-cubes.

This investment strategy has evolved from “To B” to “To B and Technology”. It is largely a deeper understanding by Panlin of China’s industrial transformation and upgrading, as well as China’s future development. “To B” is based on the emergence of personalized needs from China’s emerging consumer groups, which forces the B-end to respond quickly and produce corresponding products or services. At the same time, the arrival of China’s aging society and the demand for macro-industrial upgrading in China are forcing the B-end to reduce costs, improve quality, and increase efficiency. “Technology” is based on the great strategic backdrop of China’s national economic development safety and autonomous control over high-end sophisticated technology, the breakthrough in autonomous research and development of key technology is in line with the national will.

Based on their early experience in Chengdu, Panlin Capital is planning a new comprehensive fund in Chengdu in conjunction with industries and listed companies. The main investment direction will cover Panlin’s two major areas: Healthcare and To B and Technology. They hope to excavate and accompany more resilient growth of China’s independent innovation technology companies with greater momentum.

SOURCE Panlin Capital

The Series B financing was co-led by ShangBay Capital along with Features Capital in addition to participation from Engage Venture Partners, JWC Ventures and a global strategic investor. Laplace Interventional plans to use the funds raised from this round to pursue their First-in-Human (FIH) and clinical feasibility evaluation of its transcatheter valve system.

MINNEAPOLIS, July 24, 2023 — Minnesota based Laplace Interventional, a medical device company developing a transcatheter tricuspid valve technology, announced today that it has completed its first close on its Series B financing co-led by ShangBay Capital along with Features Capital, including participation from Engage Venture Partners, JWC Ventures as well as a global strategic investor. The $12.9M Series B financing will fund Laplace Interventional towards achieving its early clinical feasibility milestones. The company also announced that Jenny Barba, Co-Founder and Managing Partner at Features Capital, joined its Board of Directors and Todd Mortier, a serial MedTech entrepreneur had previously joined its Board of Directors.

Laplace Interventional’s device is designed to offer an increase in life expectancy and an improvement to the quality of life to patients diagnosed with Tricuspid Regurgitation (TR). Laplace Interventional is developing a prosthetic valve that will be delivered through through patient vasculature not requiring an open-heart surgery and thereby reducing complications in patients.

“Our team at Laplace has demonstrated feasibility of our technology in a preclinical setting and we are well positioned to execute our clinical feasibility evaluation in the near future,” said Ramji Iyer, Founder and CEO of Laplace Interventional. “We are grateful for the validation of our progress from our new and existing investors. We remain laser focused on our mission of improving the standard of care for patients suffering from tricuspid regurgitation.” 

“The Laplace team has made tremendous progress in a very short amount of time. ShangBay is thrilled to co-lead this Series B round to be used towards ultimately making their technology useful in improving the lives of patients worldwide suffering from TR,” said William Dai, Founding Managing Partner at ShangBay Capital.

“Laplace has designed an ingenious medical technology and is positioned to solve one of the largest unmet clinical needs remaining in structural heart disease. Tricuspid valve patients and their physicians deserve an advanced world-class solution. Features is honored to support the remarkable Laplace team in pursuit of their goals,” said Jenny Barba, Managing Partner of Features Capital. “This investment very much aligns with our focus on supporting entrepreneurs to improve clinical outcomes, increase health access, and reduce costs through novel and differentiated MedTech innovation.”

Caution: Laplace Interventional’s device is in the early stage of development phase and is NOT approved or cleared by the FDA or any other regulatory body in any region of the world.

For more information:
Laplace Interventional
[email protected]laplaceint.com

SOURCE Laplace Interventional

SINGAPORE, 25 juli 2023 — Het in Singapore gevestigde Motion G, Inc. heeft een nieuwe financieringsronde afgesloten onder leiding van Episteme, Inc., waarmee een extra $ 16 miljoen is opgehaald. Door gebruik te maken van vooruitgang in machine learning-, AIGC-, data science- en digital twin-technologieën, wil het bedrijf een revolutie teweegbrengen in het engineeringproces om de productiviteit aanzienlijk te verhogen.

Via zijn AI-gestuurd generatief engineeringsplatform levert Motion G baanbrekende geïntegreerde oplossingen voor toepassingen in de sector, waaronder motion control en flexibel transport. Het legt de lat voor productiviteit hoger door projecten met ongeëvenaarde snelheid en nauwkeurigheid van concept naar realiteit te brengen. De oplossingen zijn snel toegepast in meerdere sectoren.

In zijn streven om traditionele testmethoden te transformeren, creëert Motion G ook een intelligent testsysteem dat engineers de mogelijkheid geeft om generatieve virtuele tests naadloos te combineren met realtime praktijktests, waardoor de algehele efficiëntie drastisch toeneemt.

Door middel van deze voorbeeldige innovaties is Motion G toegewijd aan het verleggen van de grenzen van wat mogelijk is en het ontwikkelen van een productiviteitsrevolutie in verschillende sectoren.

SOURCE Motion G, Inc.

SAN FRANCISCO, July 24, 2023 — Frigade, a product onboarding and adoption solution for React, announced today $3 million in seed funding. The round was led by Craft Ventures and La Famiglia, with participation from Y Combinator, Defy.vc, and Magic.fund, as well as individual investors such as Vercel founder Guillermo Rauch, Dropbox co-founder Arash Ferdowsi and Plaid CTO Jean-Denis Greze. This funding will enable Frigade to grow its library of onboarding experiences for developers and support additional web SDKs for B2B SaaS companies. Notable startup customers using Frigade include Encord, a machine learning platform, Replo, an ecommerce site builder, and SaaSGrid, a financial data and reporting platform for startups.

Frigade gives developers the power to easily create quality onboarding flows, activation checklists, and product tours without needing backend development support. The platform offers out-of-the-box user targeting and state management features to simplify development, all while following industry best practices. It also provides React components that can be fully customized to match any brand and app, empowering developers to create singular and seamless user experiences. Now businesses can focus on their core roadmap and let Frigade take care of the hardest parts of onboarding infrastructure.

Most existing digital adoption platforms are built for marketers and managers rather than developers, so they sit on top of products instead of feeling native. Since they’re not defined in the codebase, these solutions often break without teams noticing, and there are limits to what can be built with them. Frigade translates the growth playbooks of leading software companies into ready-made React components, so any company can build and launch quality user onboarding in hours, rather than weeks and months.

“We see many product-led companies building sophisticated onboarding from scratch – reinventing the wheel – since existing no-code tools are too rigid,” said Eric Brownrout, Frigade co-founder and CEO. With Frigade, we’re giving developers a third option: build high-quality, flexible onboarding in code, faster.”

Eric Brownrout and Christian Mathiesen, CTO, first met at LinkedIn in 2015. They saw the potential of internal developer platforms for onboarding and how companies like LinkedIn, Uber, Pinterest, Figma, and more have built them to accelerate growth. Now, the founding duo are creating the off-the-shelf equivalent that makes it easy for all software companies and builders to get the same platform capabilities.

Frigade’s vision is to become the comprehensive customer journey management platform. This includes activating customers with personalized registration flows and getting-started guides, engaging customers with tailored announcements and upsells, and ultimately, retaining customers through regular feedback loops and communications.

“We believe core products should be owned by development and product teams. This produces the delightfully simple user experiences that we all love and expect,” Ryan Hrabak, Investor at Craft Ventures. “Existing digital onboarding and adoption solutions are stubborn and inflexible, and are largely designed for marketers, which leads to disruptions at critical points in the user journey. Frigade’s SDKs put the power of building in-app product onboarding workflows back into the hands of the developer, enabling them to configure and launch seamless guided experiences in far less time, with far fewer resources.”

Frigade recently completed Y Combinator’s Winter 2023 accelerator program. To learn more, visit frigade.com.

About Frigade 

Founded by second-time cofounders Eric Brownrout and Christian Mathiesen in 2022, Frigade offers ready-made React components for product onboarding and adoption. Frigade is backed by Y Combinator, Craft Ventures, La Famiglia, Defy.vc, Magic.fund, and Guillermo Rauch. Learn more at Frigade.com.

SOURCE Frigade Inc.

ATLANTA, July 24, 2023 — Eagle Merchant Partners (“Eagle”), a private equity firm investing in lower middle-market franchise, consumer and industrial companies, today announced the closing of its inaugural fund, Eagle Merchant Partners I, L.P. 

The fund closed with over $265 million, well in excess of its initial target. Investors include U.S. and international institutions, endowments, foundations, wealth managers and family offices. Led by Stockton Croft and Bill Lundstrom, Eagle leadership has invested more than $1 billion of equity and is committed to growing founder-owned businesses in the Southeast with $2 million to $20 million of EBITDA.

“We are grateful for the support from our previous investors and the positive response we received from our diverse group of new investors. We appreciate their confidence in our focused investment strategy and experience across our core sectors,” said Stockton Croft, Partner and Founder of Eagle.

“The Eagle team is excited about the six platform investments we have already made in Fund I, all of which are representative of our strategy,” said Bill Lundstrom, Partner and Founder of Eagle. “As we deploy the rest of the fund, we look forward to partnering with additional founders, owners and management teams to help them create value and achieve sustainable growth.”

Having invested in the Southeast for over 20 years, Eagle maintains deep networks in the region, providing strong access to business founders and key intermediaries in the region. The firm applies its Eagle operating playbook to build A+ management teams, invest in portfolio company infrastructure and accelerate growth through acquisitions, new unit development and organic initiatives.

Aviditi Advisors served as exclusive placement agent for the fund and Kirkland & Ellis LLP provided legal counsel to Eagle.

About Eagle Merchant Partners
Eagle is focused on partnering with founder-owned businesses based in the Southeast with unique growth opportunities and targets investments in leading franchise, consumer, and industrial businesses. The partnership is one of the region’s most experienced private equity investors. Eagle serves as a strategic partner and is committed to long-term value creation for its companies at critical transition points. For more information, visit www.eaglemerchantpartners.com

Media Contact
Thornton Kennedy
C | 404 210 0363
[email protected]

SOURCE Eagle Merchant Partners