We are a long term capital growth partner for enduring, successful businesses.

Investment Stage and Structure

Primary Equity, Secondary Shares or Both

Investment Amount between $2 - 30 Million

Minority or Majority Ownership

Common or Preferred Shares

We prefer to invest in businesses that have achieved market traction and momentum, without consuming large amounts of equity capital.

We have the flexibility to structure an investment to meet the needs of the existing business and its owners.

We are building a small portfolio of exceptional software businesses, and we are prepared to hold an investment for many years.

Portfolio

Klaviyo provides powerful machine-learning technology to drive revenues for high-growth e-commerce merchants. In a few short years, Klaviyo has grown from a startup to become the leading marketing automation software platform serving thousands of the world’s most exciting e-commerce brands.

Acadian Founder Jon Karlen led a small equity investment in the spring of 2015 and subsequent $7 million Series A in February 2016. Acadian is Klaviyo’s long-term capital partner.

Co-Founders Andrew Bialecki and Ed Hallen bootstrapped the business prior to raising equity capital. The company has grown >30x since Acadian’s investment while operating at cash-flow breakeven.

Convoke provides modern recovery management solutions in a single, secure SaaS platform for credit issuers who utilize third party collection channels to recover past due consumer debt. Many of the world’s largest credit issuers trust Convoke to grow recovery, reduce costs, improve compliance, and protect their brand.

Acadian Founder Dave Pauken joined Convoke as CEO in 2010 and, six months later, concluded the company’s initial vision was failing. Pauken made the bold decision to narrowly focus the company’s product development on the needs of large credit issuers. He led a recapitalization of the business and set the company on course to become the industry’s market-leading platform.

The company has grown rapidly and profitably over the last decade without any subsequent equity capital investment.

Roller is the leading SaaS platform for amusement parks and entertainment venues, with headquarters in Australia and regional offices in the US and UK.

Brothers Luke and Mark Finn founded Roller in 2011 in Melbourne, Australia, and funded the company’s growth largely on early customer revenues and with limited equity investment. By 2015, the company had established strong product-market fit and began to expand internationally.

In July 2018, Acadian led Roller’s first institutional equity financing with a $4.5 million investment that will fuel the company’s growth and market leadership.

CaseGlide is the first SaaS platform that helps claims organizations reduce legal fees and insurance losses, connecting insurance carriers directly with attorneys to proactively manage litigation.

Founder & CEO Wesley Todd, later joined by Carly Todd, designed the product based on his experience as a litigation attorney serving home property insurers, bootstrapping the business with early customer wins. Since 2017, CaseGlide has expanded rapidly to meet the needs of property and casualty insurers, self-insured enterprises, and third-party administrators across the country.

CaseGlide is profitable and growing rapidly. In September 2019, Acadian closed an investment to become the company’s long-term capital partner and only outside investor.

SureCost is a SaaS platform that enables pharmacies to optimize price and product selection for wholesale medication purchases. It allows pharmacies to place orders from multiple distributors and supports wholesale contract management, cost auditing, and product selection, all in real time.

Originally a pharmacist by trade, Calvin Hunsicker founded SureCost to solve the challenges with daily purchasing he experienced firsthand. SureCost currently serves more than 350 retail and long-term care pharmacies and is now expanding into the hospital pharmacy market.

SureCost is profitable and aggressively hiring to drive growth. In 2021, Acadian became majority owner and long-term capital partner to SureCost.

Style Arcade is a SaaS platform that automates merchandising for ecommerce businesses. Style Arcade provides a single source of truth and a visualization and analytics platform for a merchant’s buying, planning, marketing, and finance teams. Once adopted, customers realize a measurable increase in sales, lower returns, and higher gross margins.

The business was founded by Michaela Wessels, who had previously run merchandising for several large ecommerce businesses in Australia. Style Arcade serves more than 100 e-commerce merchants and is growing rapidly in the Shopify ecosystem.

In October 2022, Acadian made a $5 million investment in Style Arcade to accelerate investment in the product platform and increase market growth in North America and EMEA.

Who We Are

We bring to Acadian Software our experience as a successful investor and operator
across a wide range of businesses, from startups to publicly-traded industry leaders,
from businesses undergoing hyper-growth to those that are highly profitable.

Jon Karlen

Executive Chairman

As a general partner in venture funds with an aggregate capital of more than $1 billion, Jon developed a contrarian approach to early-stage software investing. His experience shows that the best companies don’t need tens of millions to prosper, and well-run SaaS businesses are great long-term investments.

David Pauken

CEO

Dave knows what it means to grow a SaaS business without venture capital. As CEO of Convoke Systems since 2010, he has proven that bootstrapped SaaS businesses are a capital-efficient, profitable means of growth over the long-term. Before Convoke, Dave had a long career building valuable businesses with prudent capital allocation.

Heather Rozmus

Director of Strategic Projects

As Director of Strategic Projects, Heather helps Acadian portfolio companies develop and execute critical, operational business initiatives that drive growth in a capital-efficient manner. Heather earned her Bachelors/Masters degrees from West Virginia University in 2015 and joined Acadian Software in 2018.

Emma Murphy

Business Development Analyst

As Business Development Analyst, Emma establishes and nurtures relationships with prospective businesses that align with Acadian’s investment strategy. Emma earned her Bachelor’s degree from the University of Tampa in 2018 and joined Acadian Software in 2022.

Investors

Acadian Software is backed by a dozen of the world’s leading PE investors.

Board

William Thorndike

Board Member

Mr. Thorndike founded Housatonic Partners, a leading middle market private equity firm, in Boston in 1994 and has been Managing Director since that time. Mr. Thorndike is a graduate of Harvard College and the Stanford Graduate School of Business. He is a Director of Carillon Assisted Living, LLC; CONSOL Energy, Inc. (Chair) (NYSE: CNX); Lincoln Peak Holdings, LLC; OASIS Group Ltd.; QMC International, LLC; ZircoDATA; a Trustee of The Stanford Business School Trust; WGBH; College of the Atlantic; and a founding partner at FARM. He is the author of The Outsiders.

If you are a software entrepreneur and interested in speaking with us, please email us at hrozmus@acadiansoftware.com and we’ll provide a login for you to learn more.

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