There is a peculiar kind of American company that everybody needs and almost nobody knows. It fabricates countertops, distributes chemicals, makes rough-terrain forklifts or supplies frozen sandwiches to convenience stores. It is profitable, regional and often still run by the person who built it. Then one day that person wants to retire. The business has customers, employees and a future, but no obvious next owner. Borgman Capital has made that awkward handoff its business.
The Milwaukee investment firm sits in a less theatrical corner of private equity. It is not buying global brands or engineering billion-dollar takeovers. Its published target is a platform company with $10 million to $100 million in revenue and $2 million to $15 million in EBITDA. It wants a history of profit, favorable cash flow, capable managers and a defensible place in a growing market. Financially stressed companies are outside the brief. So are vague turnaround fantasies.
Founder and CEO Sequoya Borgman arrived at that brief after more than two decades around transactions. A certified public accountant, he led deal practices at KPMG and RSM before starting the firm in 2017. His unusual early credential - listed cheerfully in the company biography - was selling enormous satellite dishes door to door. The distance between those jobs is wide, but the through line is useful: explain a complicated purchase to one person at a time.
A fund without the fund
Borgman Capital is an independent sponsor. The distinction sounds technical, but it changes the mechanics. A conventional private-equity manager raises a pool of committed money and then searches for companies to buy. Borgman generally finds and structures a transaction first, then raises equity for that specific deal from accredited individuals, family offices and institutions. Investors can examine the company in front of them rather than committing blind to whatever the manager might find later.
The firm calls the approach “Pass the Hat,” a name with the plainspoken charm of a church basement fundraiser. In 2024 it launched a digital platform under the same name for accredited investors. Borgman has described a network approaching 500 participants. The practical appeal is choice: an investor interested in industrial equipment can join that deal and pass on pet treats. The trade-off is visible too. Borgman must return to the market and assemble capital every time it wants to close.
That structure also helps explain the seller pitch. Without a fixed fund mandate governing every acquisition, an independent sponsor can claim more flexibility around timing, management participation and ownership. A founder might leave immediately, remain for a transition, retain a board role or continue operating the company. Borgman says its role is to provide strategy, capital, recruiting and connections while leaving daily decisions to on-the-ground leaders. Whether that restraint survives every difficult quarter is the test, but it is a clearer promise than generic talk about “synergy.”
The funnel is the strategy
Borgman says it reviews roughly 1,200 to 1,500 companies in a year and invests in two to four. The ratio is instructive. The firm can be “industry agnostic” because its behavioral filter is severe. It favors established end markets, proprietary products or services, free cash flow, a competitive edge and management that wants to grow. Geography is similarly broad with a Midwest bias. Regional offices and executives now extend its reach to the Twin Cities, Indianapolis, Portland and South Florida.
The result looks eclectic. Current businesses include Southeastern Meats, countertop fabricator K.G. Stevens, chemical distributor Technical Products, natural pet-product maker Buck Bone Organics, financial-data consultancy Continuus, forklift manufacturer Harlo and construction-equipment distributor CMW Equipment. The pattern is not a sector. It is a type of company: specialized enough to matter, small enough to be overlooked, and sturdy enough that growth does not require a rescue.
This is where Borgman fits in the market. Its competition is not only another private-equity firm. A seller could choose a strategic buyer, a family office, a search fund, a management buyout or a family successor. Strategic buyers may pay for overlap but eliminate the seller’s identity. Search funds can offer an operator’s full attention but may have narrower resources. Large buyout funds have deeper pockets but usually want larger targets. Borgman occupies the middle - institutionally trained dealmakers working on companies where an owner’s personal goals still shape the transaction.
Capital
Do not forget the building
The clever operational detail is real estate. Many founders own the plant, warehouse or office separately from the company. That property may be their retirement plan, a source of rent or simply an asset nobody has untangled. Selling the company to one buyer and the building to another turns one emotional process into two negotiations. Borgman launched a dedicated real-estate practice in 2020 so it can address both sides together.
Its property team acquires, develops, improves and repositions industrial, multifamily, office and mixed-use assets, with published deal sizes from $5 million to $60 million. A sale-leaseback is one tool: the owner sells the building, while the operating company remains as a tenant. The seller unlocks property value, and the business avoids moving. In other situations, the firm can finance an expansion or buy real estate as part of a broader succession.
Liquidity, a succession plan, growth capital and a buyer prepared to work with the existing management team.
Acquisitions, development, repositioning and sale-leasebacks across several commercial property types.
Strategic support, recruiting, add-on acquisitions and capital without a mandate to surrender every operating decision.
Deal-specific access to private companies and real estate through the independent-sponsor model.
The 2023 purchase of five industrial buildings shows the practice at scale. The properties, occupied by MGS Manufacturing and Westfall Technik, totaled about 478,000 square feet. Borgman worked with Landmark Credit Union and Tri City National Bank on financing. Later transactions included a sale-leaseback with Eutectic Corporation and the purchase of a 75,000-square-foot Menomonee Falls facility occupied for decades by Schunk Carbon Technology. None is glamorous. All involve the physical infrastructure that makes a manufacturer difficult to move and worth understanding.
What value creation looks like when it is concrete
Private equity earns its reputation after the acquisition, not at the announcement. Borgman describes a toolkit familiar to the industry: recruit leaders, strengthen sales, improve operations, invest in equipment, introduce data, and acquire complementary businesses. Its former investment in Durex Products offers a measurable example without exposing private financial statements. When Borgman sold the industrial screening-products company in 2025, it said revenue and profitability had increased following investments in operations, equipment, product development and sales.
Other evidence is more anecdotal and therefore revealing in a different way. Tom Hand, the former owner of Gilman Cheese, publicly praised how the firm treated employees after the 2019 sale and said he believed the company’s legacy could continue. Borgman later exited the cheese platform. The compliment matters because the firm is selling trust before it sells returns. A founder has to believe the buyer will not dismantle the thing attached to their name.
That trust does not make Borgman a charity. The economic engine remains buying businesses, improving them and eventually realizing gains. One 2025 podcast discussion highlighted a 57 percent internal rate of return on a recent exit. It is a single outcome, not a portfolio-wide promise. Still, it clarifies why accredited investors arrive when the hat goes around. The firm offers access to companies that are too private for public markets and too small for the largest buyout shops.
The quiet middle gets crowded
Independent sponsors have an obvious vulnerability. A signed deal is not a closed deal, and capital must be secured on schedule. Sellers and bankers may prefer the certainty of a committed fund. Competition for durable, profitable companies can push prices higher. Borgman’s answer is a record of completed transactions, a large recurring investor network and a promise it prints in unusually absolute language: when it commits, it follows through 100 percent of the time.
The firm’s recent expansion suggests sourcing is now the scarce input. It added originators in the Twin Cities and Indianapolis, invested in Harlo in 2025, and in July 2026 announced an investment in St. Louis-based CMW Equipment. The plan there is prosaic and legible: broaden service offerings and enter new markets. That is Borgman Capital in miniature. Find an established regional company, preserve what works, install resources around the edges, and ask investors to judge the particular opportunity.
For an owner, the most useful part of the pitch may be the number of problems bundled into one conversation. Who buys the shares? Who owns the building? Who replaces the founder? How will managers finance growth? Where does investor capital come from? Borgman has arranged its business around answering all five. The hat is only the memorable part. The real product is the handoff.