HOW WE BUILD

We build companies day by day in the trenches, not at quarterly board meetings.

We have built our model to optimize for founder outcomes, happy teams, satisfied customers, and long-term growth.

Similar to how you’ve built your business, we’ve built our firm in a careful and conscious manner. Our partners have been working together for years. We have painstakingly developed a culture that we believe leads to sustainable success. Our approach to investing in and building businesses is summed up here.

We empty the dishwasher.

The best cultures are built by people who do what needs doing without being asked. No task is someone else’s job.

You can never listen to customers enough.

Every assumption gets pressure-tested by the people who actually write the checks: customers. The best roadmaps, pricing, and growth strategies start with listening to all of your customers and using a systematic, data-driven approach.

We sweat the boring stuff.

The companies that win aren’t doing anything magical. They execute the fundamentals (collections, onboarding, renewal timing) with more discipline than everyone else.

Protect the culture or nothing else matters.

You can hit every target and still lose the company if the team stops believing in the mission. Culture is everything.

Energy is contagious. So is apathy.

We are passionate about what we do. We build teams that are excited about the mission and have a bias for action.

A SUCCESSFUL PARTNERSHIP

The DNA markers we look for.

Whether you’re considering a transaction right now, or the idea of bringing on an investment partner is a distant concept, it’s always good to think about what a good fit for you will be. Here’s what we look for.

You are self-aware and a straight-shooter.

You understand your strengths and weaknesses, but by necessity have worn no fewer than fifteen hats, and the idea of taking some off is attractive. We don’t beat around the bush and have a very low tolerance for jerks. We only make a few selective investments per year, and we work with people who are easy to work with and actually want our help.

Clear product-market fit.

Much of your growth has come from referrals and word-of-mouth because the product actually works. You built it over years to fit your customers’ needs through iterative feedback and deep industry expertise. That translates into renewal rates above 90% and genuinely referenceable customers.

Multiple paths to grow.

You see room to add customers, expand inside the ones you have, or enter new markets and adjacencies. Maybe you’re already attacking these and want to keep the wheels on as you scale. In every case we focus on a repeatable growth engine that sustains the business this year, next year, and ten years from now.

QUESTIONS FOUNDERS ASK

The practical questions founders ask when they start thinking about a transaction.

What size companies do you invest in?
Size is less important than (1) the business being self-sustaining (cash-flow neutral or positive) and (2) the company having product-market fit (annual gross dollar retention >90%). We've acquired companies at $2M ARR, others greater than $25M ARR, and everything in between.
What types of transactions do you execute, and what does that mean for me as the CEO/Founder?
Typically we buy 90–100% ownership stakes. We're transparent about that on the first call. What we're flexible on is what your role looks like after: leader, advisor, chair, exit. We've done all four, and we shape the structure around what's right for you and the business.
How is BLC different from a strategic buyer?
Strategics buy your company to fit it into theirs. We buy it to keep building it as itself. Same customers, same brand, more resources, and a partner who has run businesses like yours before.
How is BLC different from other investment firms?
Our credentials aren't based on how many boards we've served on. Every person on the BLC team has been a CEO or executive at a software company and has lived a journey similar to yours. We also plan on a five-to-eight-year horizon, but we're not under pressure from a clock to sell on a schedule.
What happens to my team?
Our approach has always been to bring in resources to level up the team in place and have our executives help amplify the existing team's contributions. Our model only works if the team that built the company stays motivated to keep building it. We bring leaders in alongside your team, not on top of them.
How do you prioritize leveraging GenAI within the companies you partner with?
Two streams. First, customer-facing: rebuilding workflows inside your product so your customers' jobs get materially faster. Second, internal: making your team's own day-to-day faster across go-to-market, support, and finance. We bring a senior AI leader into the company; we don't hand you a vendor list.
CONNECT

Want to learn more? Start a conversation.

We'd love to meet, trade notes on what we're seeing as the software world goes through a generational evolution, and share more about our philosophy for building great software companies.

Connect with us