This week we continue our conversation with Andrew Welch, managing director, Revelstoke Capital Partners. Revelstoke is a middle market private equity firm headquartered in Denver that focuses on building industry-leading companies in the healthcare and related business services sectors. The firm has about $1.0 billion of assets under management and, since the firm’s inception in mid-2013, has completed 40 acquisitions. Second of two parts – View part one.

The Lead Left: Who do you find yourself competing against for properties?

Andrew Welch: 50% of our deals have no investment banker involved; 80% including add-ons.  Roughly half of our deals involve buying from founders or entrepreneurs.  Experience, relationships and ability to create value matters in these situations.  Culture and approach to partnership is also important and a big differentiator.  We take a “blue-collar” approach to partnering and view ourselves as service providers to our management teams.

Focus, conviction and urgency are other ways we try to get an edge.  We start with key macro trends in healthcare, distill them into investible themes to target sectors we think will outperform and build the chessboard to identify actionable platform and add-on targets.  We then leverage our relationships to develop opportunities.  This process allows us to act proactively, quickly and decisively.