20 Acquisitions, 500 Investors, Zero Fund (The Private Equity Strategy No One Is Talking About)

Sequoya Borgman has quietly built one of the most interesting retail-funded private equity machines in America. Since launching Borgman Capital in 2017, he’s acquired 20 companies across 8 platforms and raised deal-by-deal from 500+ individual investors instead of institutions.In this episode, we break down how he sources mostly off-market deals in second-tier cities, structures conservative, over-capitalized balance sheets, manages messy founder transitions, and keeps hundreds of retail LPs aligned while staying oversubscribed on almost every deal.TIMESTAMPS0:00 Biggest risk in PE founder transitions and bad leadership fit0:44 Why the “retail private equity” model4:37 Working with PE as a CPA and deciding to start Borgman Capital in 20176:10 How uncertainty really hits lower middle-market companies8:04 Biggest early mistakes: Hiring the wrong leaders and underestimating founders11:35 Responsibility to employees, banks and LPs13:10 Sponsor: CapitalPad - Backing business buyers and accessing proprietary small-business deals14:12 First acquisition story16:24 Why Borgman chose hundreds of retail LPs instead of a fund20:45 Oversubscribed deals, memos, webinars and passthehat.com29:09 Sponsor: Spacebar Studios30:23 State of private equity today: Fewer deals closing, lower leverage and patient sellers32:34 Why Borgman fishes in second-tier cities36:17 Deal flow: 1,500 deals a year, 2-minute financial test and what they actually buy40:49 Adding 500k-1M of extra equity to protect against surprises54:44 Risks of raising from regular investors58:59 When to sellSponsors:https://capitalpad.com/ - A deal-by-deal private equity investing platformhttps://www.spacebarstudios.co/inquireFollow Mikk/PrivateEquityGuy on Twitter: ⁠⁠https://x.com/PrivatEquityGuyThis podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions.