A week before the acquisition was supposed to close, the seller changed his mind. Sequoya Borgman had already left public accounting. He had spent years thinking about starting an investment firm, found a company to buy and put it under a letter of intent. The orderly sequence was now missing its most useful ingredient: a business.
The owner had decided to keep the company in the family. Borgman had to go home and explain to his wife that the plan had fallen apart. There are more comfortable ways to begin an entrepreneurial career, particularly after leaving a partnership with a dependable salary.
He kept going. A commercial banker introduced another opportunity. About nine months after he left accounting, he finally completed his first purchase. The firm he founded in 2017, Borgman Capital, would go on to make more than 20 acquisitions. Its opening lesson arrived before it owned anything.
“It was a gut punch for sure.”
Sequoya Borgman, on the acquisition that fell apart
An education in the second shift
Long before he examined companies for a living, Borgman worked inside factories. During high school, he would finish classes and work the second shift, from three in the afternoon until eleven at night. The adults around him were doing the jobs that paid their bills. He was fitting those hours around school.
His mother raised him and his younger sister while working minimum-wage jobs. He credits her example with shaping his work ethic. When he later encountered the long hours of public accounting, he had an earlier standard against which to measure them.
Another early job took him door to door selling satellite dishes. His company biography helpfully specifies the giant ones. A small detail, but it gives the sales pitch a certain scale: a household could hardly pretend it already had one tucked away in a drawer. Borgman says the experience accustomed him to rejection. Years later, buying companies would provide ample opportunity to remain in practice.
His formal training came at East Carolina University, where he earned undergraduate and master’s degrees in accounting. He began at Arthur Andersen and later held senior roles at KPMG. From August 2012 to October 2017, he was a partner and practice leader at RSM US LLP.
The attraction of the other side
Accounting brought him close to acquisitions, restructurings and financing transactions. At RSM, much of his work involved private equity firms and their portfolio companies. He could see how a purchase was assembled and how buyers thought about the company they were taking on.
He also saw a career he wanted for himself. Advising carried a natural stopping point. Owners stayed involved through the operating decisions, the setbacks and the eventual sale. He wanted to participate in that longer sequence, with its larger share of responsibility and upside.
By his account, he considered the move for years. That matters to the story of the failed first purchase. This was a carefully prepared departure, followed by the sort of reversal that preparation cannot entirely prevent. The replacement investment was a material-handling business. After additional acquisitions and about five years of ownership, the firm sold it.
Borgman has also acknowledged the help of timing. He launched when financing was more readily available and transactions were moving. In his 2026 conversations, he describes a tougher market with more capital competing for suitable companies. Experience has given him reasons to be selective as well as reasons to persist.
The person who knows where everything is
The businesses Borgman buys have already learned how to operate. His firm’s published platform criteria include annual revenue of $10 million to $100 million, a record of profitability and capable management. Its interests run through manufacturing, food and consumer businesses, infrastructure products and services, and business services.
These are companies where a founder may still carry a remarkable amount of the organization in one head. Customer relationships, pricing judgment and the knowledge of whom to call can be concentrated in the person selling. A buyer acquires the company; the accumulated knowledge needs a more deliberate handoff.
In his discussion with Alex Rawlings, Borgman describes founder succession as a major investment risk. The leader who takes over must fit the business and its people. Smaller companies may need help with recruiting, human resources or leadership development because they lack the internal resources of a larger organization.
His approach places considerable weight on getting that leadership right. It also accepts that a founder’s timetable varies. Some remain involved; others want to leave after a transition. The work is to understand the arrangement before everyone discovers, after closing, that they had been imagining different futures.
A different clock for each company
Borgman built the firm as an independent sponsor. Instead of raising one conventional fund and then allocating it across acquisitions, the firm brings together capital for individual platform investments. Separate investment vehicles allow a holding period suited to the business rather than a single fund’s calendar.
The backing comes from a network of individual investors and family offices. In an October 2026 conversation, the firm described a record of 22 acquisitions. Maintaining that network is part of the operating work: a deal-by-deal model requires investors to keep choosing the next opportunity.
Pass the Hat gives accredited U.S. investors a way to review opportunities sponsored by Borgman Capital. Its August 2026 figures listed 498 investors, 36 investments and $422 million in capital deployed. Those figures cover the platform’s investment record; the investment count is broader than a count of acquired businesses.
The name has the informality of collecting money around a table. The audience is specific, however: accredited investors in the United States. For Borgman, it extends the relationship between finding a company and bringing together the people willing to own it alongside him.
The virtue of a shorter to-do list
Buying a company produces a tempting list of improvements. Borgman describes a more limited opening agenda: choose one or two significant initiatives that the management team can handle while it continues running the business. Pricing, sourcing, production or customer concentration might deserve attention. They cannot all become everyone’s first priority.
He talks about strengthening finance functions, introducing systems where needed and spreading the transition over several years. An owner who has personally driven sales can require several new hires to replace that contribution. Professional management arrives with payroll attached.
The implication is less glamorous than the language of transformation, and more useful to somebody trying to run a factory on Tuesday. Every new initiative competes for time with the orders already promised. A management team needs room to make changes without neglecting the business that justified the purchase.
Borgman’s firm also uses outside directors with industry experience. General financial knowledge travels well between companies; detailed operating knowledge often belongs to people who have spent years in a particular trade. He brings those kinds of expertise together rather than expecting one investment team to know every business equally well.
Old businesses, new chapters
In July 2026, Borgman Capital announced an investment in CMW Equipment, its 21st acquisition. Based near St. Louis, CMW had been founded in 1956 and served customers across ten states. Its work included equipment sales, rentals, parts and service for concrete production and roadwork.
The announcement emphasized continuity. Long-serving management, including former owners, would remain involved. For Borgman, CMW combined a business model he understood with people who knew the customers. The intended growth included expanded services and new markets.
The following month brought a partnership with Professional Concrete Cutting & Drilling in Columbus, Indiana. Founder Craig Sims and the existing leadership would continue running the company. Borgman Capital’s support would go toward people, equipment and capabilities. It was another transaction where the person who built the business remained part of its next phase.
Then came an exit. On October 8, the firm announced the sale of Continuus Technologies to Acuity Analytics, a Permira portfolio company. Continuus, founded in Milwaukee by Matt Moeser, works in data, AI and cloud engineering. During Borgman Capital’s ownership it invested in talent, training and technical certifications, reaching Snowflake Elite Services Partner status in 2025. The sale terms were undisclosed.
That transaction broadens the picture of a firm often associated with industrial and food businesses. Borgman’s preference for established operations leaves room for different kinds of work. The recurring question concerns what an ownership partnership can help an existing team accomplish.
The books still waiting
For all the attention to people, Borgman spends considerable time with books. He is a lifelong reader with a taste for business biographies, including Titan and Shoe Dog. He also listens to business podcasts. The reading pile, by his description, is several books deep and seldom finished.
There is a physical counterpart to that appetite for difficult projects. He climbed Mount Kilimanjaro, an experience discussed in the firm’s October 2024 newsletter. Asked about the future, he has described wanting to keep growing the firm, bring in more people, make more and larger investments, and complete additional exits.
His latest conversations return to the responsibilities on both sides of a purchase. Sellers should examine buyers, too, and understand how the business will be financed and what its new owners expect. The price is one part of an agreement that people must continue living with.
Borgman wanted more of the company’s story than an adviser’s assignment allowed. He has spent the years since 2017 taking on those later chapters. The opening deal escaped him. There has been plenty to do since.