Patrick Fingles already had a plan. His company, Leap, made software for home improvement contractors: estimates, financing, contracts, the paperwork between a promising conversation and a signed job. By December 2021, the bootstrapped business had reached 70 employees. The next question was how to build the organization that could carry it further.
- Nexa backs established software businesses built for particular industries.
- Its target: seven to nine companies per fund, with operating help attached.
- The bargain can include selling control while keeping equity and a leadership role.
That month, Nexa Equity took a majority stake. Fingles told Technical.ly: “The plan is not changing.” Leap wanted the resources to execute an ambitious expansion. Management stayed. The founders remained shareholders. Ownership changed, while the people responsible for the product continued running the business.
It is a useful introduction to Nexa. The firm looks for the moment when a founder’s knowledge has produced something customers need, but the surrounding company needs more capacity. A working product and a scalable organization are separate accomplishments. Nexa makes its living in the space between them.
A working product. A company to build.
Vlad Besprozvany founded Nexa in 2021 after working at Greater Sum Ventures, Insight Partners and Thoma Bravo. His premise was that founder-owned software companies needed an investor willing to supply substantial operating attention alongside money. The firm’s chosen territory is vertical software: applications designed around the work of a specific industry.
These markets have their own stubborn details. A roofing contractor needs a proposal that becomes a contract. A warehouse manager needs to understand labor costs. A school needs to sell tickets. Nexa’s portfolio includes Leap, Easy Metrics and Hometown, businesses whose usefulness depends on understanding those jobs.
The distinction matters. Customers buy these applications to complete work, often replacing manual routines. The investment opportunity depends on a founder knowing the workflow well enough to make switching worthwhile. A large market on a presentation slide cannot answer that question. A customer using the product every morning can.
Seven to nine seats at the table
Nexa publishes an unusually legible shopping list. Target companies typically generate $3 million to $30 million in annual recurring revenue, have strong product-market fit and use capital efficiently. Checks range from $15 million to more than $100 million. The preferred arrangement is control-oriented, with room for minority investments.
The small portfolio is central to the pitch. Nexa aims for seven to nine companies per fund, making concentrated attention part of its offer. For a founder, that raises a sensible diligence question: who will actually help, and with which decisions? The answer should be more specific than a promise of introductions.
Companies per fund. A stated target, not a count of all investments.
Operating help itself is familiar in software investing. Serent Capital and Level Equity also advertise internal operating teams. Nexa’s argument rests on its particular combination of portfolio concentration, industry focus and involvement. Its case studies provide a better test of that argument than the adjectives.
The work after the wire
At Leap, Nexa describes helping recruit finance, revenue and technology leaders, reorganize sales and introduce business development representatives. It also supported payments and financing monetization. In March 2022, Leap acquired JobProgress, adding customer relationship management capabilities. The work expanded both the organization and what the software could do.
Easy Metrics provides another view. Nexa invested $31 million in May 2024. The warehouse analytics company acquired labor management software provider TZA that September. Nexa’s case study describes adding executive talent and a mid-market sales approach alongside longer enterprise sales cycles. That combination addresses a recognizable problem: large deals can make the sales pipeline uneven.
“Nexa kept diving deeper to understand my world.”Dean Dorcas, Easy Metrics founder and CEO, in Nexa’s Fund II announcement
The next examples extend the same logic into other industries. Ladle launched in March 2025 by combining Storewise, ComplianceMate and MeazureUp, bringing grocery automation, food safety and operational assessment into one group. In December 2025, Nexa announced an investment in Cedar AI, which serves railroad operators and shippers.
The pattern continued in August 2026. Facility Grid, backed by Nexa the previous year, acquired PingCx, a platform for automated testing of building systems. The company introduced a broader product strategy spanning construction, validation and ongoing performance. Here, acquisition serves a product purpose: connecting more stages of a customer’s work.
What the money actually means
Nexa’s own business is fund management. Its capital comes from limited partners, including institutional investors and family offices. Those investors back funds that buy stakes in companies. A contractor purchasing Leap’s software is a customer of a portfolio business; a pension fund committing capital has a different relationship with Nexa.
Fund commitments, not Nexa revenue. Fund I also had separate co-investment vehicles.
Its inaugural fund closed above $180 million in June 2023, accompanied by another $150 million in deal-specific co-investment vehicles. Fund II closed above $390 million in May 2025 after reaching its hard cap in six months. These are commitments to investment vehicles. They should not be mistaken for sales, profit or a valuation of the firm.
For founders, the price has another dimension: ownership and governance. Leap sold a majority interest while its leaders retained equity. That arrangement ties their continuing stake to the company’s future, but it also means sharing consequential decisions. Whether the trade is attractive depends on the terms and the people involved.
A useful idea, with conditions
There is something here a founder can copy without taking private equity. Identify the constraint around a product customers already value. Hire for that constraint. Make selling more repeatable. Consider acquisitions when they add capabilities customers need. Nexa’s examples make that sequence concrete, although they do not establish that every intervention succeeds.
The conditions are demanding. Buyers must be willing to change habits. Acquisitions must integrate. Extra sales capacity needs a product that earns repeat business. A founder must want the partnership that comes with the capital. Nexa’s wager is that, in a carefully chosen industry, knowing the ordinary work in extraordinary detail leaves plenty of company still to build.