Pride of Ownership
We invest to help small businesses flourish in their next generation.
Investment Criteria
We make long term buy & hold equity investments in durable, growth-oriented field services companies. We maintain a tight network of entrepreneurial operators and small business investors in order to customize our approach and bring the most value to every situation.
Typical Situations
Buy-Out: Majority owner-operator needs a successor to facilitate owner retirement and exit
Buy-In: Owner-operator needs a business partner to help professionalize the business to grow to the next level, requiring investment capital and new talent
Growth Equity: Entrepreneur raising equity to complete a business acquisition, seeking investors for mentorship and advisory support
Eligibility Checklist
US-based private company
10+ year profitable operating history
total annual sales of $2-20M and 10-100 employees
durable customer niche with strong growth potential
desire of current ownership to fully or partially exit and/or capitalize the business for growth
How can we help you?
Already own a business?
Team
Nick Haschka
Partner
More about Nick
Nick is an experienced entrepreneur, investor, executive, and business owner. Nick is CEO of OnPoint Generators, Inc., a northern California-based backup power rollup venture. He co-founded Cub Investments in 2016 and led its first acquisition of San Francisco-based The Wright Gardner, a commercial interior office plant company, in early 2017. He led the ownership transition, modernization, and acquisition of 9 local competitors over its first 5 years. In 2020, Nick led a similar effort taking over Vargas Gardening to expand into the commercial landscaping business, and proceeded to turn around, grow, and successfully exit the business to private equity 2022. He is a shareholder, board member and/or advisor to numerous small business ventures across a range of industries.
Prior to his small business career, Nick was Chief Commercial Officer at Evercar, where he led strategy, business development, and its commercial P&Ls. He developed and closed strategic deals with two auto OEMs, a large insurance company, the US Government, Uber, and Lyft. Before Evercar, Nick was Director of Strategy with NRG Energy’s internal innovation group, Station A, where he launched strategic innovation projects and investments in solar, storage, microgrids, and energy software. His early career years were spent as a consultant at McKinsey & Company, where he advised Fortune 500 and private equity clients in a variety of growth strategy and operational improvement engagements. Nick was also co-founder of 532 Solar, a solar project developer acquired by Amonix, a solar PV system manufacturer in 2010.
Nick holds a Master of Business Administration degree from Northwestern University and a Bachelor of Science degree in Operations Research from MIT. He lives in Los Gatos, CA with his wife Christina, and 3 kids, Jack, Luke and Emmy.
Anupam Sharma
Partner
More about Anu
Anu is co-owner and CEO at Wright Gardner, LLC, a family-owned business operating horticulture services brands in Northern California. He is a seasoned investor, and finance executive with over 15 years of finance experience and over $2B of complex transactions.
Anu was previously Chief Financial Officer at Evercar where he raised over $30M in financing and coordinated all aspects of company’s corporate financial management.
Anu was a senior director at Sunrun Inc. where he structured and negotiated tax equity transactions resulting in over $1 billion of financing commitments leading up to the company’s IPO in 2015 at a valuation of $1.4 billion. He built and led Sunrun’s Asset Management function with overall responsibility for timely deployment of open tax equity funds and investor reporting. Before Sunrun, he worked as part of Wind Capital Group (acquired by Pattern Energy) and E.ON Climate and Renewables raising construction debt, term loans and tax equity for over 2,000 MW’s of wind projects across the US. Earlier in his career Anu worked as a strategy consultant for Accenture in the manufacturing and retail sectors.
Anu holds a Master of Business Administration degree from Yale University and Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering and Masters in Engineering Management from Case Western Reserve University. Anu lives in Pleasanton, CA with his wife Neha and son Ari.
Portfolio
ACTIVE
The Wright Gardner
Originally acquired in 2017 from retiring owner and founder Matthew Gardner, WG has since expanded its operation through the acquisition and integration of several Northern California horticulture services companies including Nelou’s Greenery, the San Francisco Plant Company, SF Greenscapes, Barry Brown & Associates, Bay Plant Company, Peninsula Plant Company, Elite Interiorscapes, and The Plant Fairies. The Wright Gardner provides a full range of horticultural services that make indoor and outdoor environments more vibrant, healthy, and productive.
Washington Generators
Washington Generators is a Seattle-based electrical contractor specializing in backup power applications. In 2021, entrepreneur Corey Gilgan acquired WashGen from its founding family with limited partner participation from Cub Investments. Gilgan became CEO and majority owner and is now leading the company’s next phase of growth.
CraneTech
CraneTech offers clients with field installation, maintenance, repair, and compliance services of overhead cranes and hoists. CraneTech was acquired by the partners at Steel River in 2021 in an entrepreneur-led buyout transaction.
OnPoint Generators
Founded in 2023, OnPoint Generators, Inc. is a California-based regional acquisition venture designed to acquire and grow sales, service, and rental businesses in the backup power space. OnPoint's promise is to help keep customers Always On!
Sabrepak Ltd.
Sabrepak supplies customized pacakaging and labelling products to industrial clients and distributors across Canada. The company was acquired from its founders in the summer of 2023 by small business entrepreneur Oskar Borzyminski to faciliate a retirement transition.
New York Security Solutions
NYSS is a leading commercial public safety and security systems integrator and service provider operating in the New York City area. In September 2020, Cub Investments acquired a minority interest equity stake in NYSS as part of an entrepeneurial acquisition led by Earl Gordon.
Steel River
Founded by entrepreneurs Austin King and Eric Factor, Steel River is an entrepreneurial venture focused on acquiring, running, and growing US-based family-owned industrial services businesses. The Steel River family of businesses is building the backbone of American Infrastructure.
J Blanton Plumbing
J. Blanton Plumbing is one of the leading residential plumbing companies serving the greater Chicagoland region. In 2022 Cub Investments made a limited partner investment into JBP as part of an entrepreneurial searcher-led succession takeover transaction led by Aizik Zimerman of Ternopil Group.
Avenir Hospitality
Avenir is a hospitality-focused investment and management group that is elevating the boutique hospitality industry by providing highly unique and differentiated guest-centric experiences.
Prove Partners
Prove Partners is a nationwide leader in lien-based financing for doctors. PP reimburses quality medical care for patients who have been injured as a result of a personal injury accident, including worker’s comp cases. In 2019 Cub Investments acquired a minority interest in Med+Care Solutions (re-branded Prove Partners) as part of an entrepreneurial searcher-led buyout transaction.
Blue Maple
Blue Maple offers beautifully finished, high-quality cabins available for short term stays in outdoorsy “get-away” destinations near major US cities. Cub Investments invested as a limited partner in Blue Maple’s second structured fund in 2022 to finance the company’s first major scale up of its own-operate short-term rental portfolio. The company is led by serial entrepreneur Tony Cappaert.
INACTIVE / EXITED
Vargas Gardening
Founded in 1968 by Daniel Vargas, Vargas Gardening provides commercial landscape maintenance services to clients in the Greater San Jose/Silicon Valley market. Vargas and his family sold the business to Cub Investments’ partners in 2020 after 52 years of successful operation. Vargas is known for providing property managers and owners with honest, reliable, and high quality service to maintain a professional aesthetic.
Vargas was acquired by Cagwin & Dorward LLC, part of the Sperber Landscape Companies LLC in 2022
Credit Parent
CP was founded in late 2018 by Nick Haschka, and sold to a private security company in October 2019. Credit Parent was created by parents for parents after discovering what a pain it was to protect their kids from identity by freezing their credit reports.
Echelon Medical Capital
Echelon Medical Capital offers operating capital solutions to health care providers with complex receivables situations. In 2020 Cub Investments acquired a minority interest in Echelon as part of an entrepreneurial searcher-led divestiture transaction.
EXITED 2021
Deal Types
SITUATION: RETIREMENT BUYOUT
We invest for the next generation, giving small businesses a new lease on life.
It's true. Baby Boomers are retiring in droves. As the most entrepreneurial generation our nation has ever seen, their retirement raises a vitally important question: what's happening to all these Boomer-owned businesses? Some get passed down to hand-picked family successors. Not all are so lucky. Some sell to competitors, often getting torn apart in the process. Others simply shut down. In most cases, owners wait far too long to sell, letting their business performance atrophy, and forcing difficult decisions upon the successor, if one surfaces.
However the transition unfolds, one thing is certain: unclear succession plans drag down the business. Without clarity, it's difficult to invest and nearly impossible to grow. Employees fail to realize their potential because they don't know what the future holds for the business.
Cub Investments is working to create a better alternative. We help owners exit with pride, allow employees to continue on, and bring new capital, talent, and energy for the business to grow for another generation. We come hungry to roll up our sleeves and take on the hard projects that will allow the business to ignite new growth and make critical investments for the long-term health of the company.
Just here to learn?
Read our writings or listen to some podcast episodes featuring our partners available on our library page to learn more about what we do and how we do it.
SITUATION: PARTNERSHIP BUY-IN
Already own a business and looking for a partner to help ignite growth?
You already own a small business you know has tremendous potential, but you're feeling stuck. We get it. It's lonely. It's hard. There's a reason in business people say if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.
We invest and partner with like-minded, high energy industry experts looking to scale their business to the next level and elevate their leadership. We grind with our partners to help them transition from focusing on daily operations to focusing on strategy, culture, and investing for the future.
SITUATION: LP INVESTOR
Have a great acquisition opportunity, but need seasoned investors to help guide growth?
You've been hunting for the perfect deal and finally found it. Now you just need to find some private investors able to provide more than just cash to close your acquisition.
We invest and partner with acquisition entrepreneurs, and then serve them in an advisory capacity. We help our partners get on the right track to transform their acquired company from just another nice and profitable small business into a durable, high-quality compounding growth machine.
We leverage our on-the-ground operating experience to provide pragmatic, relevant strategic and operational advice, and plug them into our larger network of business experts.
Read more on our page for Entrepreneurs.
Why work with us?
Check out our library for loads of resources we've shared with the entrepreneurial acquirer community about our experience, values, insights, and tactics.