LLR Partners

Co-founders Howard Ross, Mitch Hollin, and David Stienes serve as Managing Partners and collectively oversee the firm's investment committee. Ross acts as the senior-most investment decision-maker, while Stienes leads the healthcare and services vertical. Each partner maintains active board seats across the portfolio, ensuring founder-level accountability on capital allocation.

LLR targets growth-stage and lower-middle-market companies generating $5 million to $75 million in revenue. The firm avoids seed, early-stage venture, and distressed turnaround situations, focusing instead on capital-efficient, founder-led businesses ready to scale go-to-market operations. Its typical equity check ranges from $25 million to $200 million per transaction.

LLR executes both minority growth equity and majority recapitalizations within the same fund structure. This flexibility allows founders to choose between raising partial liquidity while retaining control or pursuing a full partnership transition. The firm's operating model—embedding its Growth Team into portfolio companies—applies to both structures equally.

The firm sources deal flow through deep vertical networks inside its five target sectors: enterprise software, healthcare IT, fintech, cybersecurity, and education technology. Rather than relying on broad auction processes, LLR builds multi-year relationships with founders and industry executives before a process launches, leveraging its sector specialization and regional Mid-Atlantic density to access off-market opportunities.

LLR's Growth Team consists of full-time embedded operators with prior line-management experience—former CEOs, sales leaders, and product heads—who work directly inside portfolio companies on pricing, sales force effectiveness, product roadmapping, and talent strategy. This differs from the traditional PE model of hiring external consultants or part-time operating advisors, creating deeper, longer-tenured operational engagement per company.

LLR avoids capital-intensive industries outside its technology and tech-enabled services remit, including traditional manufacturing, heavy industrials, oil and gas, and real estate. Within technology, the firm does not invest in early-stage pre-revenue startups or capital-demanding hardware businesses, maintaining strict alignment with its middle-market software and services focus.

The firm maintains a single headquarters in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and invests nationally across North America. There are no additional satellite offices, a deliberate choice that reflects the founders' commitment to a centralized, high-touch operating model. Portfolio company investments are concentrated in Mid-Atlantic, Texas, and California technology markets.