We believe the lower middle market is where the most attractive opportunities in private equity exist today. These are real businesses with real cash flow, run by operators who care about long-term ownership. They don’t make headlines, but they compound.
Our founding partners have evaluated hundreds of transactions and have operated across the full spectrum, from institutional private equity to bootstrapped blue-collar businesses. That range of experience shapes how we see deals. We’re not running a checklist. We’re investing in businesses and operators we have genuine confidence in, informed by years of pattern recognition across deal structures, industries, and business models.
Our model reflects our convictions. We charge no fees to sponsors. We invest our own capital alongside our investors. And we focus exclusively on the segment of the market we know best.
Travis is a founding partner of CapitalPad, bringing over 17 years of experience building, acquiring, and investing in businesses across the lower middle market.
He began his career as a bootstrapped operator, founding roughly a dozen companies across SaaS, ecommerce, and services, including multiple exits. After allocating capital across multiple asset classes, Travis identified sponsor-led acquisitions in the lower middle market as offering some of the most attractive risk-adjusted returns available to private investors, which led him to co-found CapitalPad. He leads platform strategy, investor communications, and growth.
Donza is a founding partner of CapitalPad and the co-founder of Clear Peak Capital, bringing over a decade of institutional private equity experience to the lower middle market. He began his career in investment banking at Robert W. Baird before holding roles at LaSalle Capital and NMS Capital, where he focused on deal sourcing, due diligence, and portfolio management executing on over $1 billion in transactions.
At CapitalPad, Donza leads business analysis, deal structure evaluation, and governance negotiations to meet rigorous institutional-grade standards before reaching investors.
