Huron Capital is an operationally focused private equity firm dedicated to growing lower middle-market companies through its high-impact and differentiated buy-and-build investment model. Huron plans to invest exclusively in services businesses going forward, where the workforce is tantamount to the value and return potential. One of the key tenets of their thesis is for human capital to be a center of excellence, and for their companies to be employers of choice.
"Leadership and people are the single biggest things affecting our companies, so we need to have a perspective and a strategy. Human Capital is really a science, and many people don’t understand that. In a world where our companies are purely reliant on people as services businesses, we can’t afford to have leaders who aren’t progressive thinkers or aren’t committed to learning more about human capital." – Gabe
Legal and insurance diligence are critical risk prevention measures but the human capital diligence that 29Bison provides is their core value creation tool. There is significant emotion involved in acquisitions, particularly of founder led small businesses where the team feels more like family. Huron places a large emphasis on understanding the workforce sentiment and emotions to ensure the people feel heard and cared for. Huron believes their human centered and relatable approach is attributable to their ability to win in this competitive market.
“Having 29Bison alongside us doing human capital diligence allows us to make smarter decisions faster. Founder led companies naturally come with a lot of emotion during the transition and 29Bison is instrumental in helping us prepare to navigate that.” – Tony
Huron sees a strong correlation between the strength of leadership and the financial outcomes within their portfolio and will continue to place a high importance on human capital as an investor. The leadership and culture assessments that 29Bison produces through multiple layers of the organization, provide depth that the deal team would not obtain in their discussions with the management team alone.
“We learned a lot about the CEO and the team that wasn’t on paper. If we invest in a company and lose a year due to poor leadership, that is extremely costly. It’s a competitive advantage for our long term returns to get a deep understanding of leadership and culture from the start.” – Gabe
