Erie Street Growth Partners

Erie Street targets founder-owned lower middle market businesses in North America, primarily within business services, technology-enabled services, and select industrial niches. The firm looks for profitable companies with $3 million to $15 million in EBITDA, fragmented markets, and recurring revenue characteristics. It typically provides the first institutional capital to bootstrapped operators.

The firm is flexible on structure. It executes both majority recapitalizations and significant minority investments, always ensuring founders retain meaningful equity alongside Erie Street's capital. This shared-governance model aligns incentives for long-term value creation rather than short-term financial engineering.

Erie Street combines the responsiveness of an independent sponsor with the committed capital base of a traditional fund. It does not operate on a rigid five-to-seven-year fund life, which allows the firm to hold portfolio companies through multiple growth cycles and exit when the business is ready — not when a fund clock demands it.

The firm invests across North America with a pronounced emphasis on the Midwest, leveraging its Chicago headquarters to maintain proximity to portfolio companies. This regional bias reflects a belief that the most attractive founder-owned businesses in the lower middle market are often underserved by coastal capital.

Erie Street's model is entirely direct. The firm does not operate a fund-of-funds program or allocate to external GPs as a limited partner. Every dollar deployed goes into operating companies where Erie Street principals can serve as active board-level partners.