Montage accelerate™
Beyond capital, we provide our partner companies with resources to accelerate growth
What is Montage accelerate™?
When we invest in a company, we aim to be a resource for unlocking continued value creation. Montage AccelerateTM is our proprietary program through which we help founders and management teams achieve this accelerated growth. To accomplish this, we work collaboratively with company leaders to determine what resources and roles would be most helpful based on the company’s objectives. Our goal is to be a resource in the areas where we can drive the most differential impact, without getting in the way. We understand that each business is unique and that company leaders will need various levels of support in executing their growth plans. Our approach is to tailor our engagement to the specific needs of each business and reevaluate and adapt over time as the needs of the business change.
Some specific areas we provide resources and support are:
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Human Capital We are people-first investors and align ourselves with companies that share this value. Human capital support can include leading executive recruitment processes to deepen management teams, assisting in organization design, or serving as a sounding board for executive compensation frameworks and organizational benefits plans.
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Strategic Planning We promote and assist in the facilitation of annual budgeting and the 3 to 5-year strategic planning processes. These plans are unique to each business, and we provide the framework while supporting initiatives like market expansion analysis, competitor mapping, and cost-benefit analysis.
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Operations Operations support is heavily dependent on the type of company and can include everything from manufacturing and customer fulfillment process mapping and optimization to assistance in evaluating IT system options. Across industries, we work with company leadership to refine appropriate KPIs and metrics, and assist in evaluating operational documents such as contracts, leases, or insurance policies.
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Accounting & Finance We provide guidance in implementing detailed financial reporting, including assisting in budgeting, building out forecasting tools, and sharing best practices for tax strategies and compliance. We also regularly serve as a sounding board for spend plans or cost-benefit analyses, typically in relation to initiatives that unlock growth (e.g., capital expenditures).
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Sales & Marketing We can assist with both strategic planning and more tactical items that relate to marketing and sales. For companies ready to formalize a marketing strategy, we lead strategy workshops and create marketing and sales roadmaps. Tactical support can include vetting relevant outside marketing firms, optimizing press releases, assisting in website redesign, or collaborating on the development of marketing and sales KPIs.
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Mergers, Acquisitions, & Exit Planning We lead all add-on acquisition sourcing, due diligence, and closing workstreams, including integration planning facilitation. As our exit from an investment approaches, we guide our partners in preparing for the exit in a structured way to maximize the value for all parties and lead the transaction execution. Choosing the ultimate future buyer is a collaborative decision with board members and management teams.
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Ecosystem Access We maintain a vetted network of trusted third-party service providers that we can introduce to our partners as needed, including legal counsel, tax and audit providers, consultants, insurance brokerages, and recruiters. The ecosystem founders and management teams have access to extends beyond these vendors to our own investors (many of whom have built and led successful companies of their own across our sectors of focus), as well as the CEOs and leadership teams of our other portfolio companies for peer-to-peer support in a confidential setting.
Montage accelerate™ Case studies
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Strategic Planning
Equity Methods
Background
Prior to 2012, Equity Methods was a wholly-owned subsidiary of Bank of America Corporation. As such, the Company was subject to corporate-level policies, including spend and hiring freezes, which severely impacted management’s ability to grow and scale as rapidly as demand would allow. Because of competing corporate priorities, management was not able to focus their time and efforts on forward-looking growth initiatives.
Montage Value-Add
Montage partnered with the management team to spin the company out of Bank of America. Previously, all strategic planning, budgeting, practical necessities like office space, and even service lines were folded into the larger Bank of America planning process, which mainly related to the annual budget. Montage worked with management to stand up a rolling three-year strategic planning process that looks beyond the upcoming annual budget and focuses mindshare and resources on achieving big goals.
Result
The three-year strategic planning process has helped prioritize the buildout of new service lines, informed the creation of research and development teams, provided decision clarity on significant investments in IT infrastructure (including nearly $1 million invested in Q2 2020 during the peak of COVID-related uncertainty), and helped provide advanced visibility into future practical constraints like office space.
Montage helped stand up a rolling three-year strategic planning process that shaped the development of new service lines and led to long-term investments, resulting in scaling headcount by 5x and revenue by more than 8x during the investment.
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Sales & Marketing Strategy
Boundary Devices
Background
At the time of our investment, Boundary Devices was already a strong founder-owned business with a history of steady growth. Each of the three founders was an engineer by trade and had built the Company’s success on the foundation of this engineering horsepower. None of them had a marketing or sales background and Boundary Devices lacked the resources to create a robust marketing and business development strategy that would fully capitalize on the underlying growth in their end markets and propel the Company into the next level of success. This was a pain point for each of the founders, who didn’t have the time or desire to personally focus on marketing and sales initiatives given other needs in the business.
Montage Value-Add
Montage led preparation for and facilitated a day-long sales and marketing strategy session with the management team, which included conducting a competitor analysis, developing customer profiles, and mapping customer journeys to understand the gaps in existing sales and marketing efforts. The strategy session culminated in a strategy document detailing both immediate and long-term initiatives the Company wanted to execute, with an implementation plan included to help bridge the gap between the founders’ goals and capacity.
Result
The Company established a new sales and marketing team, which included a Director of Sales, an Inside Sales & Marketing position, and a Data Entry Specialist. Boundary Devices completely overhauled its website, redesigning the layout and updating language to align with strategic sales objectives, leading to 250,000+ pageviews in 2022. These new resources allowed the Company to produce and disseminate unique digital content that helped drive engagement and sales, along with leveraging various media partners to emphasize product releases and company milestones. Boundary Devices also placed an emphasis on data, integrating a new CRM and marketing software system and tracking important marketing and sales metrics, all of which proved valuable when later exiting the Company.
Montage led the development of the Boundary Devices’ formal marketing and sales strategy, which – among other initiatives – helped the Company reach 4x organic growth in revenue and EBITDA during the six-year investment.
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Add-on Aquisition
METALfx
Background
Due to successful implementation of the Company’s 3-year growth strategy created at the outset of the investment, METALfx was experiencing record-setting revenue and EBITDA and needed additional capacity to support further growth. The Company had already maxed out its first and second shifts and given the limited labor pool of the ~5,000-person town the Company is headquartered in, it wasn’t possible to create and fill a third shift. Instead, METALfx needed additional precision equipment to solve for their capacity needs and an acquisition was the preferred path to achieve this. However, the Company’s President had never executed an add-on acquisition and didn’t have the time or mindshare to commit to this endeavor, which would take away focus from the core business.
Montage Value-Add
Montage Partners utilized its network to source potential add-on acquisitions to increase capacity and began screening opportunities on behalf of METALfx. J&M Manufacturing was identified as a suitable candidate. Montage led all workstreams to close the acquisition, including managing financial due diligence and legal documentation, and collaborating with management to formulate a seamless integration plan.
Result
The Company achieved new records in revenue and EBITDA in the year of the acquisition as a result of the immediate increase in capacity and the additional automation capabilities the acquired assets provided. The acquisition also brought with it several new customers to METALfx, one of which has grown to be a top 10 customer overall.
Montage led the add-on acquisition process, resulting in a 30% increase in overall capacity and record revenue and EBITDA the year the acquisition closed.
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Executive Recruiting
Southwest Data Products
Background
At the time of Montage’s investment, SWDP‘s founder was deeply involved in every aspect of the Company and was working long hours and weekends just to keep up. This created a constraint to future growth and a culture that was too dependent on a single individual, all while placing unsustainable stress on the founder personally.
Montage Value-Add
Montage collaborated with the Company’s founder to develop a plan to build a high-performing management team to create a scalable culture, unlock current constraints on growth, and allow the founder to focus his time on longer-term strategic issues. Montage led the successful search for a CFO, starting with leveraging the Montage Partners ecosystem for both the recruiters involved as well as potential candidates. The Montage Partners team invested the time to filter and interview candidates prior to the Company’s founder to ensure that his time was only spent reviewing high-caliber candidates.
Result
The Company hired a talented CFO who has upgraded and scaled the Company’s finance and accounting processes, along with building out an operations team to execute on potential revenue opportunities. The Company’s founder was able to shift focus and mindshare to long-term strategic direction.
Montage led the executive recruitment process to build a high-performing management team around the Company’s founder, leading to a more sustainable lifestyle for the founder and over 5x organic growth in revenue and EBITDA during the seven-year investment.
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Capacity and Automation Expansion
METALfx
Background
Prior to Montage’s investment, METALfx was a non-core subsidiary of Avista Corporation, a publicly-traded utility company based in Washington. METALfx’s management felt that the Company didn’t receive the attention, collaboration, and resources it needed to reach its growth potential. There was a clear opportunity and desire by management to further invest capital in the business for advanced machinery and skilled labor, but as a non-core subsidiary, this was not a priority for the parent company.
Montage Value-Add
At the beginning of the investment, Montage collaborated with management to develop a 3-year growth strategy. As part of that strategy, management determined that a new state-of-the-art fiber laser cutting machine was required in order to stay competitive in the market, support capacity expansion, and increase automation. This purchase would require a $1.5M capex investment and a significant reorganization of the shop floor. Montage served as a sounding board throughout the evaluation of this investment decision, assisted in modeling assumptions and impact on METALfx’s financial statements, and facilitated discussions between the Company and its lender, resulting in an 18-page ROI document that was approved by the board of directors.
Result
METALfx purchased the fiber laser and related automation equipment within the first year of Montage’s investment, despite the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic right at the time of installation. The new laser cut 5x faster than prior standard CO2 lasers and was highly efficient given the associated automation, operating at 50% of the cost of prior equipment. The Company maintained a 15% compounded annual EBITDA growth rate since installation and achieved record revenue and EBITDA years in the two years following installation.
Montage helped the Company evaluate and execute on a $1.5M capex investment, resulting in a nearly 50% increase in revenue capacity and significant efficiencies, allowing the Company’s management team to shift focus to longer-term strategic growth initiatives.
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Exit Planning
Boundary Devices
Background
Five years into the investment in Boundary Devices, two of the three founders wanted to begin preparing for retirement given their age. The third founder, the CEO, wanted to continue to execute on the significant growth opportunities available to the Company. All parties agreed it was the right time to pursue an exit, but these varying objectives required the right buyer to make a future exit a win-win-win for all parties. Management did not have the mindshare to lead an exit process given the high growth rate of the Company and other time-consuming initiatives. Additionally, outside of our investment in 2016, the founders were not familiar with the M&A process.
Montage Value-Add
Montage led the exit preparation process, including interviewing four investment banks to find the right fit with the eventual advisor, Lincoln International. Montage led the organization of the data room and ensured historical financials and the Company’s data were clean and ready to be evaluated by buyers. Montage also worked with management to develop forecasts and articulate the overall story of the Company and the future growth potential. This was especially important given how impacted the Company had been by the extreme supply chain shortages during the COVID-19 pandemic; articulating the story in light of the significant market noise was necessary as this had a substantial impact on valuation. During the closing process, Montage led negotiations, due diligence, and legal documentation.
Result
Boundary Devices completed a sale to Laird Connectivity in December 2022, with all three founders achieving their personal goals for the exit. The near-term path to retirement for two of the three founders was set, and the third founder remained CEO and was excited to have a new, well-capitalized partner to continue the acceleration of the Company’s growth.
After collaborating and agreeing on the ideal exit timeframe, Montage led the exit process from preparation to closing, resulting in the founders realizing more than 5x the amount of proceeds in the 2022 exit compared to their proceeds in the 2016 transaction with Montage Partners.
Montage accelerate™ team
Cole Jackson
Senior Vice President, Portfolio Acceleration
As Senior Vice President of Portfolio Acceleration, Cole collaborates with the firm’s portfolio company management teams to establish and execute each company’s growth strategy.
Previously, Cole was a Senior Manager at Accenture Strategy, where he worked with clients across industries to improve operations and develop and implement new operating models.
Cole holds a bachelor’s degree in industrial engineering from the University of Oklahoma and a master’s degree in management science and engineering from Stanford University.
Ben Jenks
Director of Business Development
As Director of Business Development, Ben is responsible for sourcing and reviewing new investment opportunities across all the firm’s sectors of focus.
Ben previously worked on the business development team at Alpine Investors, where he focused on direct sourcing across the business services, commercial services, and technology sectors. Prior to joining Alpine Investors, Ben worked on the Business Operations and Analytics team at Route, a venture-backed technology start-up.
Ben holds a bachelor’s degree in information systems and a master’s degree in information systems management from the Brigham Young University Marriott School of Business.
BROOKE OUVAROV-BANCALERO
Director of Marketing and Public Relations
Brooke is responsible for managing the firm’s brand, media relations, and creating and implementing all marketing strategies. Brooke also consults with the firm’s portfolio companies on marketing initiatives and campaigns.
Prior to joining Montage Partners, Brooke worked for the largest US non-profit, Fidelity Charitable. While there, she oversaw a portfolio of high net worth clients, worked to improve team processes and efficiencies, and created educational materials and reports for clients. She has also worked with the Phoenix Art Museum’s marketing and public relations team.
Brooke holds a bachelor’s degree with honors in English, a Master of Arts in arts management, and an MBA from Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas.
Zachary Workman
Accounting and Reporting Associate
Zachary assists with the firm’s accounting and operational matters, including limited partner reporting and oversight of portfolio company reporting.
Zachary was previously a Senior in the assurance practice at EY where he facilitated the completion of timely audits for public and private clients, primarily in the real estate industry.
Zachary is a licensed CPA in Arizona and holds a bachelor’s degree in accounting from Arizona State University.
CHRIS YOUNG
CFO & Director of Operations
Chris is responsible for the firm’s accounting and operational matters, limited partner reporting, and oversight of portfolio company reporting. He currently serves as a director of METALfx, RDD Associates, Solly Baby, and United Right-of-Way.
Chris was previously a Manager in the assurance practice at PricewaterhouseCoopers where he led both public and private company audits across a variety of industries.
Chris holds a bachelor’s degree in accounting and a master’s degree in accounting from Washington University in St. Louis.
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