Profile

Guidepost Growth Equity (“Guidepost”) is a leading growth equity firm based in Boston that manages ~$1.6 billion of capital commitments across three funds. Guidepost partners with entrepreneur-led technology businesses, focusing on application software and data services and infrastructure software and tech-enabled services. Guidepost invests between $15-75 million of equity as a minority or majority investor and provides the flexible capital, operational support, and strategic guidance necessary to enhance the continued growth of its companies.

Guidepost provides portfolio company operational support through its Value Creation Group (“VCG”) which is focused on four critical areas for growth stage companies: Product & Technology, Strategic HR, Sales & Marketing, and Strategy & Operational Finance. Guidepost has developed best practices, maturity models and an operating advisor network available to its investment partnerships across these functional areas. The Firm is exclusively focused on partnering with entrepreneur-led companies utilizing technology to transform dynamic markets. As a trusted partner to its companies, Guidepost works closely with these entrepreneurs to build strong independent Boards of Directors, augment management teams, evaluate strategic options, and provide critical operational and financial support.

Awards

2023 Top Growth Equity Firms

2023 Top 40 Under 40 Growth Investors, Chris Cavanagh

2023 Top Software Investors, Gene Nogi

2022 Top 40 Under 40 Growth Investors, Chris Cavanagh

2021 Top 25 Growth Equity Firms

2021 Top 40 Under 40 Growth Investors, Chris Cavanagh

2019 Top 40 Under 40 Growth Investors, Won Park

2018, Top 40 Under 40 Growth Investors, Won Park

Key People

Chris Cavanagh, General Partner

Chris Cavanagh focuses on originating, evaluating, and managing growth equity investments in application software and data services sectors. Previously, Chris was a Vice President at Great Hill Partners. He began his career as an investment banking analyst at Citigroup in New York, where he focused on the consumer products and retail sectors. Chris earned a B.A. in economics from the University of Notre Dame.

Gene Nogi, General Partner

Gene Nogi focuses on vertical and infrastructure software and tech-enabled services companies. Previously, Gene was a Partner with Symmetric Capital, a lower middle-market growth equity firm. He began his private equity career as an Associate with Summit Partners. Gene holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and a B.A. cum laude in economics from Amherst College.

Russ Pyle, General Partner

Russ Pyle focuses on infrastructure software and tech-enabled services companies. Previously, Russ was a Partner at M/C Venture Partners, a Boston-based private equity firm. Earlier in his career, Russ was an Associate at TA Associates in the technology group and an investment banking analyst at Alex. Brown & Sons. Russ holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and an A.B. cum laude from Princeton University.

Nate Machado, Operating Partner

Nate Machado is the Firm’s Operating Partner. Prior to Guidepost, Nate was a Senior Operations Executive at Abry Partners. Previously, Nate was a General Manager at Wayfair and a Senior Manager in Deloitte Consulting’s Strategy and Operations practice. Nate earned an MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management and a B.S. from the United States Military Academy.

Funds Raised

Since its founding in 2007, Guidepost Growth Equity has raised over $1.6 billion in committed capital and has invested in over 35 companies.

Key Investments

ActiveViam: Exit Pending 2024
Sector: Infrastructure Software & Services

ActiveViam provides industry-leading risk management and data analytics infrastructure software purpose-built for the significant speed and volume demands of financial services. The Company’s comprehensive analytics platform enables global banks, asset managers, hedge funds, exchanges, and other financial services providers to manage real-time risk and regulatory compliance.

Mineral: Exited December 2023
Sector: Application Software & Data Services

Mineral gives small businesses peace of mind by proactively solving HR and compliance challenges with data, technology, and personalized advice.

Intellum: Invested July 2023
Sector: Infrastructure Software & Services

Intellum provides a leading enterprise learning management system for internal and external audiences including employee, customer, and partner education. The Company’s SaaS platform enables the world’s largest and most sophisticated organizations to effectively create, manage, deliver, and optimize highly personalized eLearning programs at a global scale.

SearchStax: Invested July 2023
Sector: Infrastructure Software & Services

SearchStax provides end-to-end site search solutions including managed Solr Search-as-a-Service and site search management software. The Company helps its customers deliver a modern digital experience through deploying and managing advanced search infrastructure, ensuring high availability and security and enabling highly personalized site search.

ClassWallet: Invested March 2023
Sector: Infrastructure Software & Services

ClassWallet provides a digital wallet based decentralized spend management platform for state agencies and K-12 school districts. The Company enables its clients to disburse funds efficiently and compliantly at scale, while automating every step of the spend management lifecycle including purchasing and procurement, accounts payable automation, and expense management.

Shibumi: Invested September 2022
Sector: Infrastructure Software & Services

Shibumi provides industry-leading strategic program and portfolio management software. The Company’s SaaS platform adaptively manages and prioritizes a portfolio of strategic initiatives to enable organizations to successfully deliver continuous enterprise-scale transformation.

Traction on Demand: Exited April 2022
Sector: Tech-Enabled Services

Traction on Demand is North America’s largest independent Salesforce consulting partner and app development firm.

Lucid: Exited January 2022
Sector: Application Software & Data Services

Lucid provides a programmatic survey sample marketplace and media measurement platform that enables brands, agencies and partners to complete world-class market research and measure the effectiveness of their advertising.

dscout: Invested January 2022
Sector: Application Software & Data Services

dscout is the world’s leading SaaS qualitative research platform. dscout enables hundreds of the world’s most innovative companies to pinpoint, understand, and track the moment-to-moment product, service, and brand experiences that influence their customers.

Network To Code: Invested October 2021
Sector: Infrastructure Software & Services

Network to Code is a leading provider of network automation and DevOps infrastructure services to global enterprises. The Company leverages open source technology, commercial networking platforms, custom software integration and deep network automation expertise to help its customers accelerate automation initiatives and bridge the gap between DevOps and network engineering.

OutSystems: Partial Exit
Sector: Infrastructure Software & Services

OutSystems provides a platform that enables enterprise customers to rapidly develop software applications in a “low code” environment using a visual, model-based approach, instead of traditional programming methods.

WP Engine: Partial Exit
Sector: Infrastructure Software & Services

WP Engine is the world’s #1 platform for WordPress. The WP Engine platform provides brands the solutions they need to create remarkable sites and apps on WordPress that drive their business forward faster.

Capital Responsibility

Guidepost firmly supports creating sustainable growth collaboratively with our entrepreneurs, investors, and team members. We believe that the principles of environmental, social, and governance (“ESG”) are important to achieving our collective goals. We created our Firm’s ESG program to capitalize on this belief by incorporating these principles holistically across our firm, investment strategies, portfolio companies, and entrepreneurs. Throughout our investment process we incorporate ESG principles to identify potential value creation opportunities and mitigate risks. Our ESG due diligence checklist actively assesses each potential investment against key ESG criteria and is an important part of our Investment Committee decision-making process. Additionally, our ESG findings during diligence are incorporated into our value creation plans. We actively monitor and enhance our portfolio’s ESG performance during our investment period through the following initiatives:

Annual ESG Questionnaire: Guidepost collects ESG data from all portfolio companies, enabling our companies to see where they are versus their peers and assessing how we are doing as a portfolio. It also serves to identify any potential risks that may need attention and to highlight best practices.

Annual ESG Symposium: Through this event, we provide our companies with the questionnaire findings and progress against prior year performance to targets. We also review ESG targets for the following year and share best practices from our portfolio companies and ESG experts in our network.

Additionally, Guidepost actively incorporates ESG principles within our internal operations:

Environmental: Our firm’s environmental programs aim to limit unnecessary impact of our office footprint.

Social: We are an equal opportunity employer with a diverse staff. Promoting diversity is critical to our hiring and operational practices. Guidepost endeavors to be a responsible employer by creating a culture in which it develops a diverse pool of high-caliber employees and staff and has a commitment to talent management and development to give everyone at the firm an opportunity to perform to the best of their ability. The Firm supports and volunteers several times a year with non-profit organizations serving our local community, including Cradles to Crayons, Rosie’s Place and the Greater Boston Food Bank.

Governance: Guidepost has a board seat in every investment we make and establishes independent boards at all portfolio companies. We actively maintain and review all SEC RIA required, updating when necessary. This includes continuous monitoring and updating the employee handbook, compliance, cyber security, and data protection policies.

CEO Reviews

Patrick Comer, Founder & CEO of Lucid (exited)

“What I can truly say is, without reservation, that not only should [other entrepreneurs and founders] work with Guidepost but that I would be happy to work with Guidepost again and again.”

John Marchese, CEO of Network to Code

“When we met with the Guidepost team it was their approach with their companies that stood out to us. As we did our diligence, we quickly realized that these were down-to-earth investors, and that they were willing to roll up their sleeves and help entrepreneurs, like ourselves, build businesses at similar stages as our company”

Michael Hurnaus, CEO of Tractive

“Guidepost actually does what they say (they’ll do) before the term sheet (and) after they’ve invested.”

Greg Malpass, Founder & CEO of Traction on Demand (exited)

“I knew in my gut that what got Traction to $40M was not going to get us to $100M. We needed a partner in growth who is an expert at helping companies get to the next level…and we decided Guidepost was that expert.”

Michael Jones, CEO of Spoonflower (exited)

“Guidepost has been a very important part of our recent success. They were a great sounding board to discuss key challenges and opportunities, believed in our growth opportunity, and early on helped expand our senior executive team.”