Guidepost Growth Equity

Russ Sampson and Michael Sullivan co-lead the firm as Managing General Partners and sit on the investment committee. They built the firm after holding operating roles in scaling software companies. The partnership structure is flat — investment decisions are made by the two founding partners with input from the broader investment team, with no external advisory board.

Guidepost targets bootstrapped, founder-led North American software and technology companies with $10 million to $50 million in revenue. The firm writes equity checks of $15 million to $75 million, leading majority recapitalizations and significant minority investments. It typically enters as the company's first institutional investor — often after a decade or more of organic customer-funded growth — and avoids auction processes entirely.

Guidepost relies on a proprietary origination model built around direct outreach to bootstrapped founders and referrals from its network of technology operators. The firm explicitly avoids competitive auctions and banker-driven processes. Instead, it identifies capital-efficient software companies that have never hired an investment bank and initiates conversations around founder liquidity and growth acceleration.

Guidepost does not invest in pre-revenue startups, venture-stage companies with venture-capital cap tables, or asset-heavy businesses outside software and technology-enabled services. The firm also avoids auction processes, hostile transactions, and sectors where it does not have direct operating experience. It explicitly screens out companies that have already taken institutional equity rounds.

Guidepost Growth Equity is an independent private equity firm organized as a traditional fund manager, not a family office. It raises commitments from institutional limited partners — including endowments, foundations, and family offices — and deploys through closed-end commingled funds. The firm closed its third fund at $850 million in 2021 (per the firm, 2021).