Waud Capital Partners (WCP) has partnered with software industry executive George Ahn to find, acquire and grow vertically-focused application software companies. WCP has committed $100 million of equity capital to back the partnership.
This agreement follows the recent close of the firm’s fourth private equity fund, Waud Capital Partners IV, with $1.056 billion of capital commitments. The new fund was oversubscribed and closed at the hard cap and above the original target of $750 million of limited partner commitments.
“I am thrilled to have the opportunity to work with Waud Capital to acquire a vertically-focused software company and build it into an industry leader,” said Mr. Ahn. “The software market is rapidly evolving as SaaS delivery models create new opportunities and challenges, and as competitive lines become increasingly drawn around domain-specific expertise. Many software companies, particularly those in the middle market, have solid foundations for success but have yet to fully capitalize on their growth opportunities.”
Mr. Ahn has 25 years of experience in the application software industry and most recently was the head of IBM’s smart infrastructure software organization. During his time at IBM, Mr. Ahn had responsibility for a number of products including Maximo, asset management software used to manage physical assets on a common platform in asset-intensive industries; and Tririga, software used to manage the operational and environmental performance of facilities. His past experience includes global expansion, cloud migration and completing acquisitions. Before his time at IBM, Mr. Ahn led Tririga as its CEO for six years prior to its acquisition by IBM in 2011. Prior to Tririga, Mr. Ahn held senior leadership positions at PeopleSoft’s CRM division, TIBCO, and Siebel Systems.
“We are tremendously excited to partner with George,” said WCP Partner Matt Clary. “He has an exceptional track record over his entire career, having created tremendous value at a diverse range of organizations spanning from rapidly-growing middle market companies to global software giants. We believe the combination of George’s leadership and WCP’s growth capital and experience developing platform businesses will lead to great outcomes from our partnership.”
The partnership with Mr. Ahn comes less than a year after WCP’s June 2015 acquisition of CyberGrants, a provider of software-as-a-service used to manage charitable grants and employee engagement in corporate social responsibility activities. WCP acquired CyberGrants following a similar partnership with software executive Mark Layden, who is now the CEO of CyberGrants and an Operating Partner at WCP.
Waud Capital Partners makes investments from $50 million to $100 million in middle-market companies with enterprise values from $50 million to $250 million that operate in the healthcare services and business services sectors. Since its founding in 1993, Waud Capital has made more than 185 investments, including platform companies and follow-on opportunities. The firm is headquartered in Chicago (www.waudcapital.com).
© 2016 Private Equity Professional • Private Equity’s Leading News Magazine • 3-14-16
