Profile

Kayne Partners is the Los Angeles-based growth private capital group of Kayne Anderson Capital Advisors, L.P., an alternative asset manager with $32 billion in assets under management. The Kayne Partners team has dedicated equity and debt platforms for investing in lower middle market, privately held, high growth, enterprise software and tech-enabled service businesses across North America. Leveraging its large firm resources, the team has developed a durable and repeatable investment strategy for applying its stage expertise in sourcing and underwriting companies at an early inflection point. Kayne Partners helps accelerate growth by utilizing the team’s experience, its operating partners and an extensive vendor partner network, as well as scaling through organic growth and M&A. The combination of these factors creates must-have assets that become highly pursued by strategic buyers & financial sponsors.

Across its equity and debt funds, Kayne Partners primarily makes $10 to $50 million investments across six core industries—supply chain & logistics, media and telecommunications, financial technology, healthcare IT, security and compliance, and business process automation and outsourcing.

Awards

2023 Top Women Leaders in Growth Investing, Jacqueline Berris

2022 Top 25 Growth Equity Firms

2022 Top 40 Under 40 Growth Investors, Leon Chen

2022 Top 25 Software Investors, Nishita Cummings, Nathan Locke

2022 Top 25 Private Equity Firms

2022 Top Women Leaders in Growth Investing, Sabrina Chaudhury

2022 Top 25 Healthcare Investors, Leon Chen

2021 Top 25 Growth Equity Firms

2021 Top 40 Under 40 Growth Investors, Leon Chen

2021 Top 25 Software Investors, Nishita Cummings

2021 Top 25 Private Equity Firms for Growth Companies

2020 Top 25 Growth Equity Firms

2019 Top 20 Private Debt Firms

2018 Top 40 Under 40 Growth Investors, Nishita Cummings, Leon Chen, Robert Shilton

2016 Top 40 Under 40 Growth Investors, Nishita Cummings

2015 Top 40 Under 40 Growth Investors, Nathan Locke

2014 Top 40 Under 40 Growth Investors, Nathan Locke, Scottie Wardell

Key People

Nishita Cummings, Managing Partner Co-Head of Growth Equity Co-Portfolio Manager

Nishita Cummings is the Managing Partner, Co-Head, and Co-Portfolio Manager of the growth private capital funds (“Kayne Partners”) at Kayne Anderson Capital Advisors, L.P. (“Kayne”). Most recently, Nishita led Kayne Partners’ $50M growth equity investment in Panzura in 2022 and Kayne Partners’ $30M growth equity investment in KlearNow. 

Nishita has been responsible for helping grow the platform to over $1.2 billion under management across both the growth equity and credit strategies. She works to grow and cultivate talent within the team, while being focused on diversity throughout Kayne and across the portfolio, and she recently launched The Women’s Technology Circle, a Kayne Partners initiative, bringing together women of some of the fastest growing technology businesses across North America.

Nate Locke, Managing Partner Co-Head of Growth Equity Co-Portfolio Manager

Nathan Locke is a Managing Partner, Co-Head, and Co-Portfolio Manager of the growth private capital funds (“Kayne Partners”) at Kayne Anderson Capital Advisors, L.P. (“Kayne”). Nate has helped lead the teams latest fundraising efforts and under his leadership, the team closed its largest growth private equity fund to date. 

Nate is particularly good at building relationships with entrepreneurs and helping them understand the value of partnering with Kayne. Throughout his tenure at Kayne, Nate has advised on multiple boards through representation as a board director or board observer. He has also sold a number of software companies to larger strategic buyers and completed recapitalizations with larger financial sponsors. Select transactions have included the sale of Chicago-based, MaintenanceNet, Learn.com, 3CInteractive and the recapitalizations of Source Intelligence, and myKaarma.

Leon Chen, Managing Partner

Leon Chen is the Managing Partner for growth private capital funds (“Kayne Partners”) at Kayne Anderson Capital Advisors, L.P. (“Kayne”). Within the last twelve months, Leon has led investments in Bark Technologies (a parental control and content monitoring tool for families to proactively monitor text messages, emails, and 30+ different social networks for potential safety concerns), Onfleet (a last mile execution software), and Shipfusion. Leon has helped lead Kayne Partners’ inaugural growth credit strategy offering a capital efficient alternative for strong technology businesses that want to take advantage of a lower cost capital structure from a value-add partner.

Leon has a unique ability to analyze what a company needs in order to grow to the next level and overcome the typical challenges growth stage technology companies face in their quest to scale. He has held board roles at Bark, Consero, Cloudbreak Health, Curbio, Decisiv, Dejero, Elevate, Fully Managed, Fullscript, Onfleet, rfXcel, Shipfusion, and You.i.

Robert Shilton, Managing Director

Robert Shilton is a Managing Director for Kayne Partners. He is primarily responsible for identifying and analyzing investment opportunities. He also assists with the monitoring of portfolio companies and deal execution. He has helped grow the Kayne Partners investment strategy since its inception and understands the key challenges facing growth stage technology companies. Rob currently serves as a board director for Ideas United, GeoWealth, and Onfleet. Rob also serves as a mentor to junior team members and has spearheaded training efforts.

Jacqueline Berris, Vice President

Jacqueline Berris is a Vice President for Kayne Anderson Capital Advisors’ growth capital strategies, where she is responsible for identifying and analyzing investment opportunities and assisting with the monitoring of portfolio companies and deal execution. She joined the Kayne Partners team in January of 2022 as a Senior Associate and within one year was quickly promoted to the role of Vice President. Beyond investment execution, she helped lead the launch of the teams’ GERI (Graphical Enterprise Reporting Interface) platform which has been an ongoing initiative designed to give the team easy access to current and historical performance data of each portfolio company. She is one of the founding board members of the Women’s Technology Circle and has served as a mentor to the junior team and has spearheaded training and sourcing initiatives.  

Jacqueline currently serves as a board observer to Panzura, CreatorIQ, Bark Technologies, and TicketManager.

Funds Raised

Since 2011, Kayne Partners has had five dedicated funds that have each grown in size and several co-investment funds totaling over $1.2 billion in assets under management as of December 31, 2022. The debut 2011 vintage equity fund was $25 million and the latest fund, Kayne Partners Fund V closed in June 2022 with total commitments of $425 million, plus additional co-investment capital. Kayne Partners is currently investing out of its fifth fund.

In Q3 2022, Kayne Partners launched its Kayne Partners Growth Credit strategy focused on stage-specific technology companies looking for a flexible capital solution to continue sustained growth. The credit fund offers a capital efficient alternative for growth technology businesses that want to take advantage of a lower cost of capital structure from a value-add partner. The credit strategy enables the team to bring a complementary capital solution with a different risk-return profile to a different subset of growth companies than its current Kayne Partners Fund V equity fund is targeting, while leveraging its existing resources, infrastructure, and underwriting expertise. Additionally, the team will benefit from the experience and knowledge of Kayne Anderson’s other credit platforms.

Kayne Partners Coinvestment Vehicles – seven individual co-investments since inception

Key Investments

Fullscript: Invested May 2019 exited November 2021 (HGGC & Snapdragon Capital)
Sector: Supply Chain & Logistics

Fullscript is the result of a merger that occurred in June 2018 between Natural Partners a wholesale and distribution network and Fullscript an online nutraceutical dispensing and prescription management technology platform. The combined company provides online nutraceutical dispensary management, convenient patient fulfillment, and patient adherence tools, and other functionalities. Fullscript’s solution provides practitioners with a user-friendly platform that helps streamline the creation of nutraceutical prescriptions, providing access to over 280+ professional-grade brands, decision-support at the point of care, and visibility into and improvement of patient-protocol adherence rates, all while providing an important revenue stream and a unique ability to capture refill revenue.

Riviera: Invested May 2019, exited, April 2022 (Insight Partners)
Sector: Business Process Automation

Riviera Partners  is a global driver of innovation for today’s most influential companies – expertly placing executive talent in the crucial areas of software engineering, product management, and design. Riviera combines over two decades of recruiting expertise with a proprietary platform that uses machine learning to score and predict the best candidate for a company’s specific needs, driving successful outcomes.

Circle Cardiovascular Imaging: Invested May 2018, exited April 2022 (Thoma Bravo)
Sector: Healthcare

Founded in 2007 and headquartered in Calgary, Canada, Circle Cardiovascular Imaging enables cardiologists to view and analyze cardiac images. With Circle’s software, physicians read images more accurately and efficiently, improving patient outcomes and physician productivity. Customers include Oxford University, UCLA, the Mayo Clinic, HELIOS, and Johns Hopkins. In April 2022, Circle completed a recapitalization and received a majority investment from Thoma Bravo. Kayne rolled a portion of its equity and continues to own a portion of the business.

rfxcel: Invested: July 2017, exited March 2021 (Antares Vision Group)
Sector: Supply Chain & Logistics

rfXcel provides product serialization, traceability, and compliance software for the Life Sciences, Food and Beverage, and Cosmetics industries, enabling all constituents in the supply chain to comply with government regulations, increase visibility through the supply chain, and enhance quality and safety of their products by reducing counterfeiting and channel diversion and having much improved downstream supply chain visibility. Customers include Walgreens, AbbVie, L’Oreal, Chanel, Sanofi, Cardinal Health, and Baxter. In 2021, rfXcel was acquired by Antares Vision Group, a publicly traded provider of manufacturing inspection equipment for similar industries and is now organized as a division of the company.

Capital Responsibility

Kayne Partners believes that incorporating environmental, social and governance (ESG) risks into its investment practices enhances the long-term sustainability of its investments by providing tangible benefits to investors. Kayne Partners works closely with the firm’s Director of ESG Strategy and Chief Compliance Officer to strengthen the integration of ESG risk factors into the overall investment process for evaluating risk. Kayne Partners believes that ownership provides the opportunity for significant influence. As such, the team generally prefers direct engagement with companies to address material risks, rather than blanketed exclusions. 

However, there may be instances where Kayne Partners believes engagement alone cannot address the inherent ESG risks of certain industries and has developed a restricted investment policy. ESG analysis of cybersecurity, human capital, and governance also continues to be a key component of its due diligence and investment process. In focusing on these three areas, Kayne Partners leverages outside consultants for supplemental cyber security and human capital/talent management diligence, holds at least one portfolio company board seat to enforce governance and drive engagement with management. As part of this ongoing effort, Kayne Partners hosts the KPF Summit to provide networking and training focused on key ESG risk factors, DE&I, and other best practices for portfolio company management. All ESG findings during diligence are summarized within the specific investment committee memo of that target company and the team is developing a process by which it will leverage software to track and visualize quarterly ESG data from each portfolio company and aggregated at the Fund level. In addition, Kayne Anderson produces an annual ESG report that was recently released and includes a section on the Kayne Partners Growth Capital team.

CEO Reviews

David Roemer, CEO, Ideas United

“Kayne Partners has served as an ideal partner for our team at Ideas United. Especially throughout the pandemic, they’ve been patient and understanding—while continuing to support our growth and long-term success. The team at Kayne, ranging from their leadership to their strategic operating network, consistently contribute their expertise and relationships to help propel our results. In addition, programs such as the Kayne Partners Summit enable opportunities to interact with other portfolio company leaders and industry experts. My team and I are excited about the next chapter for Ideas United in partnership with Kayne.”