Updated:
Schlotterbeck & Foss
Schlotterbeck & Foss was established in 1993 by James Schlotterbeck and Anders Foss, building a boutique investment firm far from traditional financial...
Schlotterbeck & Foss
Schlotterbeck & Foss was established in 1993 by James Schlotterbeck and Anders Foss, building a boutique investment firm far from traditional financial centers. The firm operates from Westbrook, Maine, a location that shapes its deliberately quiet, long-horizon posture. Rather than chasing the same targets as funds in Boston or New York, the firm uses its distance to think in years and decades, constructing a concentrated equity portfolio that rarely exceeds 25 names. The firm deploys capital almost exclusively through publicly traded equities, selecting companies that dominate defined, defensible niches within enterprise software, payments infrastructure, and healthcare technology. It targets established platform businesses with high switching costs, recurring revenue, and management teams willing to compound returns through buybacks and bolt-on acquisitions rather than dilution. Confirmed positions over time have included Jack Henry & Associates, a core banking software provider that has compounded for decades, and Tyler Technologies, the municipal government software leader. The portfolio gravitates toward US-domiciled companies, though it has selectively held businesses with significant European and Canadian end-markets where the unit economics mirror their American peers. Team size is intentionally limited to the two named principals and a small operations staff. The firm has not pursued multi-billion-dollar scale, nor does it operate adjacent venture or private equity vehicles. It has no separate philanthropic foundation under the firm umbrella. In recent periods, the firm maintained its trademark low-turnover approach, a posture reinforced across its life as a going concern — the 13F filing history shows multi-year holding periods as the standard, not the exception. Schlotterbeck & Foss is distinct in its willingness to be fully public-markets-only while still behaving like a buy-and-build private equity investor. It does not run a mutual fund complex, does not market to institutional consultants hunting quarterly benchmarks, and does not rotate portfolio holdings to satisfy style-box mandates. This structure means the portfolio is the unfiltered expression of two owner-operators' best ideas, no committee dilution, no redemption-driven selling, and no pressure to deploy at scale.
General information
Firm type
Asset Manager
Year founded
1993
AUM
Undisclosed
Location
Region
North America
Country
United States
City
Westbrook
Corporate office
Westbrook, ME, United States
Principals
James Schlotterbeck
Principal / Portfolio Manager
Anders Foss
Principal / Portfolio Manager
Sector focus
Frequently asked questions
Who makes investment decisions at Schlotterbeck & Foss?
James Schlotterbeck and Anders Foss are the two named principals and portfolio managers. The firm has operated with the same two-person investment leadership since its founding in 1993, without adding a formal investment committee or junior analyst tier that dilutes decision-making. Both names appear on the firm's ADV filings and regulatory disclosures as the individuals responsible for portfolio construction.
Is Schlotterbeck & Foss structured as a family office or an asset manager?
The firm operates as a registered investment adviser managing separate accounts for a small pool of outside clients, not as a single-family office. Its ADV filings show it manages assets for individuals, high-net-worth clients, and pooled investment vehicles, all run through the same concentrated equity strategy. There is no evidence of a multi-family-office conversion or wealth-management services beyond the core portfolio mandate.
Does the firm invest in private companies or only public equities?
Schlotterbeck & Foss deploys capital almost entirely in publicly traded equities. Its 13F filings show a long-only portfolio of common stocks, and there is no public record of direct private company investments, venture allocations, or private equity fund commitments. The firm's edge comes from treating public companies as if they were private — long holding periods and deep fundamental research without the liquidity constraints of closed-end structures.
What investment stages or company profiles does the firm target?
The firm targets mature, cash-generating platform businesses — not early-stage venture or pre-revenue companies. Its portfolio historically clusters in enterprise software, payments, and healthcare IT companies that dominate a defined market niche, generate recurring revenue, and repurchase their own shares. It has shown little interest in pre-profit tech or speculative growth names, instead favoring businesses with multi-decade operating histories.
How does being based in Maine affect how Schlotterbeck & Foss invests?
The Westbrook, Maine location acts as a structural differentiator by physically removing the principals from the day-to-day consensus-building of Boston and New York. The firm has not built analyst teams, not courted Wall Street sell-side relationships heavily, and not participated in institutional consultant beauty parades. This isolation enables the genuinely long holding periods — often beyond ten years — that define the portfolio, because there is no career risk in looking different from a peer group for quarters at a time.
How does the firm handle redemptions and liquidity?
Because Schlotterbeck & Foss invests only in liquid public equities, it can meet withdrawal requests without triggering forced asset sales at unfavorable prices — a structural advantage over private-credit or private-equity managers. Its separate-account structure means client portfolios are individually custodied and not subject to the run-risk dynamics of a daily-dealt pooled fund. However, the firm's small size means a single large redemption could still meaningfully alter the principal-client relationship.
What is the firm's known posture on co-investment or side-by-side vehicles?
There is no public evidence that Schlotterbeck & Foss operates co-investment vehicles, sidecars, or special-purpose vehicles alongside its core separate-account strategy. The principals manage client capital directly, and regulatory filings do not reveal private funds or parallel investment structures. The model remains a plain-vanilla separately managed account, which gives clients direct ownership of the underlying securities.
Profile maintained by Altss using OSINT (open-source intelligence), regulatory filings, licensed data partners, and verified direct submissions. Read the methodology. Last updated: . Continuous refresh with full update cycles at least every 30 days.
Need institutional-grade insight on family offices?
Altss delivers:
Prefer a guided tour?
We’ll walk you through: