Stairway Capital

Trevor Lang functions as the firm's anchor decision-maker. Lang built his career in operational turnarounds before founding Stairway, and the investment committee is restricted to partners who have personally led a business through a restructuring. Benjamin Herrick serves as Partner alongside Lang, and the firm intentionally caps headcount to maintain direct partner involvement in every portfolio company.

The firm pursues control buyouts in the North American lower middle market focused on complex, operationally-distressed situations. Typical targets include corporate carve-outs, founder-owned businesses lacking succession plans, and underperforming divisions where a larger buyer struggled with integration. Stairway avoids standard auction sales in favor of proprietary sourcing through family offices, independent sponsors, and business intermediaries who value the firm's ability to close transactions other buyers cannot.

No. Stairway Capital exclusively pursues control buyout positions. The firm does not operate a venture capital, growth equity, credit, or minority investment strategy. This single-structure approach means every dollar committed by limited partners flows through the core buyout fund into transactions where Stairway holds governance control and can implement its operational playbook directly.

Stairway Capital closed Fund II above target in September 2024, but the firm has not publicly disclosed the specific hard cap or final close amount. Limited partners include a concentrated group of family offices, endowments, and institutional allocators, with the fund size deliberately constrained to preserve the firm's ability to deploy partners directly into each portfolio company without adding layers of non-operating staff.

Stairway does not invest in venture-stage companies, real estate, pure financial services, hospitality, or commodity-driven businesses. The firm concentrates on sectors where operational improvements—rather than commodity cycles or multiple expansion—drive returns: business services, niche manufacturing, specialty consumer, and healthcare services. Technology risk, biotech, and infrastructure are similarly excluded from the mandate.