Lineage Capital

Co-Founders and Managing Partners Brooks Zug and Michael Zinner lead the investment committee. The firm maintains a flat partnership structure without a separate institutional investment board, keeping deal approval concentrated with the two named principals who built the strategy.

Lineage sources almost entirely through professional referral networks — estate-planning attorneys, sell-side accountants, trust-and-estate advisors, and commercial bankers who represent founders considering partial liquidity. The firm rarely participates in auction processes, relying instead on a position as the first call when an owner wants a partner rather than a pure sale.

Lineage is a private equity firm, not a family office. It manages committed closed-end partnership capital from institutional and high-net-worth limited partners. However, its deal cadence — one to three platforms per year with flexible holding periods — gives it an operating tempo closer to a patient partnership shop than a drawdown fund rushing through its investment period.

Lineage executes direct control and significant-minority recapitalizations. The firm writes equity checks directly into privately held companies. It does not operate as a fund-of-funds or allocate LP capital to third-party managers.

Lineage targets profitable, founder-owned companies at the lower end of the middle market — typically $2 million to $10 million in EBITDA. The mandate covers partial buyouts, growth recapitalizations, and succession-driven transactions. The firm does not invest in startups, distressed turnarounds, or pre-revenue companies.

Brooks Zug has a long history in private equity, having previously co-founded HarbourVest Partners in 1982 before leaving decades later to build Lineage around the partnership-recap model. Lineage operates independently of HarbourVest and other prior affiliations, with its own fund vehicles and LP base.

Lineage does not market co-investment slots to its limited partners as a standard program. Because each deal is structured around a specific founder partnership, the firm typically holds a concentrated board-level position and does not syndicate minority checks across multiple GPs on a single transaction.