Trivest Partners

Day-to-day investment leadership sits with a group of long-tenured partners including Jamie Elias (joined 1997), Dave Gershman (joined 2002), and Jorge Gross Jr. (joined 2006). Each leads a distinct strategy — Gross runs the Recognition Fund, Brian Connell focuses on the Discovery Fund, and Elias heads TGIF, the non-control investment strategy. The firm maintains a formal Investment Committee that includes these partners.

Trivest is a private equity asset manager, not a family office. It manages commingled institutional funds across multiple strategies — buyout, lower-middle-market (Discovery Fund), and non-control growth investments (TGIF). Its exclusive focus on founder and family-owned businesses can blur the appearance, but the firm raises capital from limited partners and is not managing a single-family fortune.

Trivest only makes direct investments and add-on acquisitions — it does not operate as a fund-of-funds or allocate to outside GPs. The firm’s three strategies (buyout, Discovery Fund, TGIF) all deploy capital directly into operating businesses, typically taking control or significant minority positions alongside family shareholders.

Trivest targets founder-transition situations: buyouts, recapitalizations, and growth equity placements. The flagship buyout fund acquires majority stakes in mid-market companies, the Discovery Fund handles smaller lower-middle-market founder exits, and TGIF writes non-control growth checks. The firm does not pursue early-stage venture or distressed turnarounds.

The 2025 hire of Jennifer Cuellar into a 'Trivest Family Offices' role suggests the firm operates a parallel wealth-advisory function separate from its private equity funds. Details are sparse, but this likely exists to serve the personal financial needs of the founders and families whose businesses Trivest partners with, creating a stickier relationship post-exit.

Trivest raises capital from a broad base of institutional limited partners. The firm discloses the existence of an 'Investors' section on its website and a non-solicitation disclaimer, but as an asset manager it has never publicly attributed its AUM to a single family or individual wealth source.

Trivest operates as a lead or control investor and does not position itself as a co-investment or fund-of-funds platform for external managers. Its referral programs for independent sponsors and intermediaries are designed to source proprietary deal flow for Trivest funds, not to allocate capital to other GPs.