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Brian Keane

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BS, Cornell University
MBA Harvard University

In addition to being a senior advisor at Battery Point Capital, Brian co-founded Seabrook Partners in January 2011. Prior to Seabrook Partners, he spent five years as a Managing Director and National Head of the Capital Strategies Group at Citigroup and then Morgan Stanley following the sale of Smith Barney by Citigroup to Morgan Stanley. The Capital Strategies Group provided M&A services to middle-market companies in the U.S. During the five years Brian ran the Group, it completed more than 110 transactions with aggregate value exceeding $3 billion.

Brian spent three years at Aether Systems, first as Executive Vice President, Corporate Development and later as President, Enterprise Solutions Division, Aether’s largest operating division. Brian was instrumental in transforming Aether from a 20-person private company with an annual revenue run rate of $1 million into one of the leading wireless data companies in the world with annual revenues in excess of $100 million. He was responsible for managing the company’s acquisitions, joint ventures and public equity and debt offerings.

Brian ran the East Coast Technology Group at Smith Barney in New York where he worked from 1988-1998. Brian began his investment banking career at E.F. Hutton in 1986 and later worked for Robertson, Colman & Stephens in San Francisco.

Timothy Shea

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BA, Rutgers University
JD, Georgetown University 

At Battery Point Capital (BPC), Tim specializes in analyzing company and brand positioning, go-to-market strategies, and digital marketing/sales enablement for all BPC portfolio companies. He also oversees our joint venture with The Inforefinery, a leading lead generation firm.

Tim has over 25 years experience in the public and private capital markets, investment banking and asset management.  As an investment banker and capital markets specialist, he has raised more than $10 billion of debt and equity capital for companies in the retail, utility, energy, manufacturing and technology industries.  

While a capital markets specialist at Chase, Merrill Lynch, and ABN Amro, Tim specialized in corporate finance advisory, rating agency advisory and capital structure optimization for large public companies like Walmart, International Paper, General Motors, and General Electric.  As an adviser at Citigroup, Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo, Tim advised entrepreneurs on growing, improving and selling their businesses.  

Jay Wright

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BS, Georgetown (summa cum laude)
JD, University of Chicago

Jay Wright has over twenty years of experience in finance and public markets. As the Chairman, Chief Executive Officer or Chief Financial Officer of three public companies over the past eleven years, he has structured numerous private and public financing transactions. He also served as Chief Financial Officer for TAMSCO, a privately held government contractor, which he helped sell for $83.5 million in 2003, and was a founding shareholder of Chesapeake Government Technologies, which was acquired by Widepoint Corporation (Amex: WYY) in 2004. He has expertise in all aspects of structuring private placements and in creating exits via mergers and acquisitions and open market sales.

Previously, Mr. Wright worked as an investment banker with Merrill Lynch in New York and a mergers and acquisitions lawyer with Foley & Lardner in Chicago and Skadden, Arps in New York. Mr. Wright received his law degree from the University of Chicago Law School and his Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration from Georgetown University, summa cum laude, where he also serves as an adjunct finance professor. Mr. Wright is a member of the Illinois state bar and is Series 7, 24 and Series 66 qualified. Mr. Wright is the co-author of Finance and Accounting for Nonfinancial Managers, Sixth Edition (Perseus Books, 2010).

Kevin Singer

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U Pennsylvania, MBA, (honors)
Michigan, BS, (cum laude)

Kevin has over 30 years of investment banking experience.  Kevin has worked on a broad range of M&A and corporate finance transactions, both domestic and cross-border, including leveraged buyouts, acquisitions, divestitures, initial public offerings, high yield financing transactions and private capital raises. 

As an investment banker at Salomon Brothers, Merrill Lynch and Bank of America, Kevin’s clients have included corporations, boards of directors, private equity firms and individual owners.  Kevin’s transactions have spanned a large range of industries, including packaging, consumer products, transportation, oil and gas, renewable energy and health care. 

Representative clients include International Paper, Sealed Air, Chesapeake, Grief Industries, Kennametal, Plastipack, MeadWestvaco, AGCO, True Brew, Spear Power Systems, H2Bev, Shorty’s, and Saratoga Chips.

Our Experience

Our Process & Resources

A MULTI-FAMILY OFFICE Focused on private equity investing

Growth Equity Solutions for Growing Companies

Whether you are contemplating new markets, expanding your sales team or even evaluating strategic M&A, we can help you fund your growth initiatives.

Investment Process
Venture Marketing
Resources

How We Work With Companies

Exit Strategies & Recaps

In many cases, taking over the position of an owner or existing shareholder represents a fast way for us to take a significant equity position while also providing capital for growth. We are prepared to acquire companies outright or gain entry via a partner buyout.

Building Sales & Marketing

By far, the most important area of focus to drive growth is by improving the overall sales & marketing approach. Companies can be grown faster than ever, but detailed planning and the efficient allocation of marketing resources is the key to a successful go-to-market strategy.

Strategic Acquisitions

Whether upstream, downstream or lateral, companies can often transform themselves fastest via a transformational acquisition. We have been advising companies on inorganic growth strategies for decades.

Expansion & Diversification

Whether its a brand new product line, new features for an existing product, or an overhaul of a successful product, all can drive increases in revenue.

Technology Investments

For some companies, a major investment in new sales software, ERP systems or business intelligence will lead to a revenue breakthrough.

In many cases, investing in or improving the marketing and sales tech stack will be the highest ROI spend.

Process Improvement

Improving processes, reducing expenses, expanding channels and improving existing products are strategies that all require investment capital and can yield dramatic revenue improvements.

Our Investment Process

Battery Point Capital is an investment-oriented family office, formed to make control-oriented buyout investments in established lower middle-market U.S. companies as well as earlier stage, fast growing companies that are not yet profitable.

We prefer to make growth equity investments, both minority and control, in the following company types:

  • Companies in the following sectors: Manufacturing & Distribution, Business Services, Food & Beverage, Software, Technology and IT Services and Digital Media & Advertising.
  • Software Companies: we invest in growing (generally bootstrapped) software companies with developed business models and demonstrated growth potential. We look for a high percentage of recurring revenue, high gross margins, high customer lifetime value (CLV) and low customer churn.  We focus on growth potential rather than company size, but we generally require that a company has achieved product-market fit and has a clear plan to scale.
  • Traditional Companies: for established companies in other sectors (manufacturing & distribution, food & beverage, business services etc.), we seek a minimum $2 million of adjusted EBITDA and $5MM of revenue, but we will also consider fast growing but still unprofitable companies
  • While we prefer a management team prepared to work with us for a period post investment, we do have the ability to staff complete executive management teams in most cases.

By far, the leading reason companies raise capital is to invest in sales and marketing. Once product-market fit is established, companies should be focused on building a great sales and marketing process.

In our experience, this requires companies to leverage the most relevant marketing channels and marketing technology in order to scale.  Whether this is executed via outsourcing or by building teams and processes internally is company specific – both approaches work, though we prefer outsourcing.

  • Companies should be building a company-specific sales process supported by strong software platforms that make closing sales, onboarding salespeople and scaling much easier
  • Companies should be building a company-specific marketing process that is measurable, scalable, and focuses on the most important channels and sources of customers
  • Companies should have a very clear idea of their various customer journeys and build a marketing plan that addresses every step of that journey

Most of the companies we speak to spend far too little on sales and marketing (between 0 and 5%).

Your spend will depend on the opportunity – larger markets with good opportunities and low competition demand a budget of 20% or more of revenue for sales and marketing.

The rule of thumb for established and/or smaller companies ($5mm or less in revenue) is 5-10% of revenue should be allocated to sales and marketing efforts.

For faster growing companies (30% or more YOY growth), it is not uncommon to see budgets of 30-50% of revenue.

SaaS companies often spend anywhere from 80 to 120 percent of their revenue on sales and marketing. It then plateaus around 50 percent from year five on.
High-growth technology businesses spend 25 to 45 percent of revenues on sales.
A new product launch can boost sales and marketing costs to 30 percent for a small business, while the steady state spend is 10 to 20 percent of revenues.
High revenue/low margin companies can plot their spend goals against cashflow.

We are major proponents of outsourcing sales & marketing for most of our portfolio companies, at least in the early stages. The complexity and execution risk in the modern go-to-market effort is substantial, and the requisite talent to execute is simply too hard to find.

Even for larger companies with substantial revenue, we have pushed out the horizon on bringing sales and marketing in house.  Better to allocate that capital to professional support, onboarding, training new clients etc.

For marketing to be effective, it needs to be innovative and engaging, so relying on your own staff will only get you so far. Outsourcing connects you with marketing agencies that can stay on top of new technology and trends.

In a perfect world, a company would have a clear idea of how they would allocate the capital we might provide.  The level of detail in your plan will vary by industry, but here are our general views:

  • Have a plan for which positions you will seek to fill over the investment cycle, how you will hire them, what those people are expected to deliver, how you will measure their success, etc.
  • Website should be ready to serve as an assistive platform for your go-to-market efforts and facilitate a robust and rapid customer journey.
  • Have some experience with the basic elements of the sales tech stack and martech stack that are relevant to your go-to-market efforts.
  • Have a firm grasp of your key metrics – CLV, CAC, Churn Rate, etc.
  • Know which marketing channels you plan to invest in, based on direct experience.
  • Have a game plan for investing in a content strategy based on experience and/or reasonable predictions.
  • Be able to discern between your top-of-funnel and bottom-of-funnel marketing efforts and attendant budget need.
  • Have a proven sales process that enables/accelerates the purchase cycle.

In 2020, after countless interviews with external agencies, we decided to create a joint venture with a leading database company and a leading paid media company to deliver services to our portfolio clients. 

We now have substantially more control over the fate of our investments and can deliver best-in-class services to our companies. The specialists working with our clients have decades of marketing experience.

This joint venture is focused on delivering value in the core tasks and marketing channels as we see them – SEO & content marketing, web redesign, email marketing, paid search and social media marketing.

At Battery Point, we often provide capital for acquisitions and we have extensive career experience in increasing the valuation of a business via M&A driven growth strategies. We are able to help our partners drive value via acquisition through the following advantages and experience:

M&A execution is our core skill. Because acquisitions are our expertise, we often focus on acquisitions to add on to our existing portfolio companies whenever possible. We have extensive in eliminating overlapping costs post acquisition, allowing our portfolio companies to concentrate on growth opportunities.

We understand the need for thorough due diligence & research. We understand that much of our return on investment in an acquisition-based strategy is based on an ability to acquire businesses in the best way possible from the start and to minimize their risk. We are aggressive in sharing our M&A experience with our portfolio companies, providing them substantial help in identifying acquisition targets that fit their criteria.  Prior, we help perform substantial industry and competitor research as well as generate valuation estimates. We can also help our companies identify underperforming businesses that can be improved through better management and proper investment in critical areas.

We are experienced in the upgrade. As soon as an acquisition is completed, we help our partners establish strong financial controls, internal reporting, eliminate unprofitable units, streamline operations, and help management to identify operational inefficiencies. We also know the importance of having excellent software and IT operations and encourage our partners to move quickly to upgrade to the best available solutions that provide enhanced business analytics to support better decision making.

We can help with use of appropriate leverage. We help our partners access debt capital to fund an acquisition strategy, as leverage sets up a much higher internal rate of return (IRR) in the long run while also allowing our companies to consider large, transformative acquisitions.  As important, we understand how to leverage the balance sheet of the target acquisition to close larger acquisitions.

As a growth equity investor, minority positions are more the rule than an exception, so we are prepared to work with companies to create investment structures that fit best with their objectives.  In fact, we see minority investments as potentially more advantageous than control stakes for the following reasons:

Better investments: Companies selling minority stakes often have more attractive growth prospects, specific expansion plans, and clear roadmaps for investing the capital raised

Confidentiality and reduced execution risk: Sellers often don’t want to publicize their desire to attract a third-party partner and sell a minority stake, fearing adverse publicity and customer fallout if the transaction fails. Unlike the vast majority of control deals, minority deals are typically not consummated through formal auctions.

Competitive advantage for patient capital: Minority stakes usually provide early participation in the growth of companies, and allows us to build relationships with owners rather than simply participating in a public auction. Investing in building relationships with family owners and senior managers takes time and effort, but we have learned that all the calls, meetings, and industry conferences eventually pays off.

 

We do consider a variety of factors and take certain steps when making minority investments:

When they work: Minority ownership interests can work well when the key means of value creation are related to top-line growth and governance. These include facilitating organic or inorganic cross-border growth, professionalizing management teams and processes, enhancing governance, and consolidating fragmented sectors.

When they don’t: Minority investing can become problematic, however, when the investment thesis hinges on activities such as creating value through restructuring, improving operational performance, cost cutting, and supply chain initiatives. In these instances, majority ownership and a hands-on, control-oriented approach are often more appropriate.

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Don’t let business strategy be developed absent a thoughtful conversation on what talent needs you will have over the next months and years to execute on the strategy. In our experience, HR is too often trying to catch up to the staffing needs rather than having a measured plan in place to achieve hiring targets.

We have a process – We can conduct a thorough review of the hiring needs required for scaling

    1. Identify Organization Goals & Requirements
    2. Sourcing And Attracting The Talent
    3. Recruiting And Selecting The Talent.
    4. Employee Retention
    5. Promotion
    6. Performance Appraisal

 

Giving an unbiased view of your current team – We can see things that you cannot and can help identify key positions to be filled

Using our Rolodex – Recruiting specific players from our existing contacts and relationships to fill key posts

Getting your compensation scheme right – we can help create and implement a robust compensation program for your existing and potential C level executives

Evaluating leadership at add-on acquisitions – Due diligence of the C suite talent at potential acquisitions

When companies grow, they are increasing their revenue equally as fast as they are adding resources to enable that increase. When companies scale, on the other hand, they add revenue at a faster rate than they take on new costs. When establishing a scaling strategy for your business, you should have the following long-term goals in mind:

  • An established value ladder of products/services
  • Available subscription packages
  • High customer retention rates
  • Diverse income streams
  • Predictable revenue

 

Standardizing your processes: Scaling requires you to move beyond the start-up phase and standardize workflows so that they’re able to cope with increased market demands.  Leveraging technologies and full-suite solutions (i.e. QuickBooks) can help business owners grow their company while saving time and keeping upfront costs low.

Aside from automation, standardizing your business processes is another essential element of scaling. When you bring in new team leaders and middle managers, you must document and distribute a clear set of instructions to the personnel responsible for handling a certain activity.  These instructions should be repeated regularly and will ultimately convert an otherwise complex task into a structured regimen. Whenever confusion arises within the team, they can refer to the process checklist rather than you.

Identifying core competencies: To operate at scale, business leaders need to concentrate on mastering the company’s core competencies. For example, in every company, there are daily or weekly tasks that generate more leads and greater revenue than others. These are the tasks that must be prioritized on your business’s schedule, as they are the ones that stimulate growth.  Knowing how to scale a business begins with being able to identify where you offer the most value to clients and customers and aggressively ramping up those specific operations. We can offer a fresh perspective and key insights in this regard.

Leveraging equity: To execute your plan, you need funding to leverage and complement your equity capital. We have extensive experience in securing funding for small businesses, some that are standard, some that are new to the market – traditional term loans, short-term loans, business lines of credit, SBA loans, invoice financing, recurring revenue loans (based on MRR or ARR), etc.