Acro has been established by its members Joe Schwartz and Seth Fischoff to implement a strategy of investing in small businesses.
The Principles have had a long, ten plus year, history of successfully investing in small businesses of which the last five have been working together.
Their combined small business investments ran across multiple stages of growth and various industries including: transportation, physical therapy, mineral mining, marketing technology, emergency response, lice removal, and event production. Beyond the actual investments, the Principles have evaluated companies across many additional industries.
We also believe that scale can solve what we call “the integer problem”. Expertise or knowledge is not needed by most small businesses on a continual basis, but is necessary “on demand”. Also, individual small businesses cannot afford or compete for top corporate talent which result in talent gaps and unreliable subcontractors. Acro with dedicated resources can deploy those resources to its portfolio companies when needed and thus, attract executives that will be dedicated to our portfolio companies at an affordable value.
We target small businesses with EBITDAs of less than $3m that are typically owner-managed and operated with limited succession plans. We believe that a well organized and professionally managed investment platform can manage businesses “for” its owners and not “by” its owners. Such platform can return superior returns by providing each portfolio company with “Board” level oversight, identifying and installing senior management to affect business transition, and designing and implementing changes to operations.
