Stone-Goff Partners

Managing partners Laurens Goff and Hannah Stone Craven lead the firm and set investment policy. They are supported by partners Chaz Bertrand and Rob Bosco, alongside a senior team that includes managing directors Meet Doshi and Matt Gibbons. The group operates a consensus-driven investment committee; all control transactions require managing-partner approval. This structure has been unchanged since 2010.

Stone-Goff operates in the lower middle market, targeting control investments in B2B service businesses with enterprise values generally below $100 million and EBITDA between $1 million and $5 million. The firm's deal flow includes owner-operator succession, corporate divestitures, and recapitalizations of founder-led knowledge-economy firms. Vast majority of transactions are proprietary or lightly intermediated.

Stone-Goff invests in service companies that use technology as a delivery differentiator — it does not back pure-play SaaS or deep-tech ventures. The portfolio includes managed IT services, cybersecurity consulting (5Q Partners, One11 Advisors), data and AI professional services (Zencos), and digital marketing agencies (MissionWired). Investment committee members have stated they avoid businesses where technology alone, rather than expertise combined with process, constitutes the primary moat.

The firm maintains a dedicated business-development function led by Vice President Allen Fozzard, supplemented by operating advisors with direct industry networks. Origination concentrates on rehearsed sector themes — telecom advisory, cybersecurity services, digital political consulting — where the partners have built repeatable acquisition playbooks. Intermediary-sourced auctions represent a minority of closed transactions.

Stone-Goff Partners is a committed-fund private equity firm, not a single-family office. It manages pooled institutional capital raised from external limited partners. Founders Goff and Craven have invested personal capital alongside LPs in each fund, but the vehicle is structured as a traditional closed-end private equity fund with a 10-year term, management fees, and carried interest.

Stone-Goff leads or controls every transaction it participates in and does not operate as a passive co-investor. The firm has not disclosed any limited-partner co-investment programs alongside third-party sponsors. For add-on acquisitions, it uses the portfolio company’s balance sheet and additional equity from its own fund — co-investment rights are extended to existing limited partners, not external managers.

The firm has publicly stated that its focus is on B2B services within the knowledge economy. It explicitly avoids manufacturing, hard-asset industries, retail, consumer products, biotechnology, real estate, and financial institutions. Within technology, it avoids product software, hardware, and capital-intensive infrastructure plays, restricting its tech exposure to service-delivery models only.