Kayne Anderson Growth Capital Named to Inc.’s 2023 List of Founder-Friendly Investors

Annual roundup highlights the private equity, venture capital, and debt firms with the best track records of success backing entrepreneurs

Los Angeles, CA — November 1, 2023 – Kayne Anderson Growth Capital (“Kayne”), the growth private equity arm of Kayne Anderson, was proud to be named to Inc.’s fifth annual Founder-Friendly Investors list, honoring the private equity, venture capital, and debt firms with the best track records of success backing entrepreneurs.

The final list recognizes 218 firms that remain actively involved with the businesses they invest in, and that have earned the trust of the entrepreneurs they support to help drive growth.

“Now more than ever, founder-led companies need financing partners that offer guidance, expertise, and understanding—not just capital. These are the private equity, venture capital, and debt firms that have founders’ backs when it comes to accelerating growth,” says Scott Omelianuk, editor-in-chief of Inc. Business Media.

“At Kayne Anderson Growth Capital, we provide flexible capital to experienced and motivated entrepreneurs that have strong conviction in their businesses and built clear competitive advantages, shown an efficient use of capital, and share attractive investment characteristics. Through our industry expertise and supporting the growth of our companies with the support of our larger firm resources, we have a successful track record of building companies into must-have assets for leading strategics and financial sponsors,” said Nishita Cummings, Managing Partner, and Co-Head of Kayne Anderson Growth Capital.

Kayne has been building partnerships with founder-led businesses for two decades. Kayne’s strategy has been to partner with high-growth, software and tech-enabled service businesses in underserved geographic markets across North America at a critical inflection point and support them with capital and stage-specific expertise to drive growth and unlock value.

Kayne recently launched a complementary credit strategy focused on serving another sub-set of software entrepreneurs looking for a flexible capital solution and a value-add partner. The team has already made two credit investments in FreightVerify, a cloud provider of end-to-end supply chain visibility and Knotch, a marketing intelligence and content analytics platform. Kayne continues to maintain a disciplined underwriting philosophy grounded in fundamentals and has actively partnered with existing management teams to prioritize profitable growth and capital efficiency. Since 2020, Kayne has deployed nearly $300M in new platform investments and has achieved 17 realizations to both strategics and financial sponsors.

Kayne’s experience partnering with over 50 entrepreneurs has allowed the team to develop consistent processes in adding value through key hires, resource and product enhancements, infrastructure and scalable operational processes, capital formation planning and corporate development support. Kayne’s capabilities in sourcing and funding add-on acquisitions also enables its CEO’s to better seize opportunities, especially amid market dislocation. To further assist its founders, Kayne provides access to a curated vendor network and operating partners with domain and industry expertise from organizations such as Walmart, Cerner, and McAfee.

According to Inc., to compile the list they went straight to the source: entrepreneurs who have sold to private equity and venture capital firms. Founders filled out a questionnaire about their experiences partnering with private equity, venture capital, and debt firms and shared data on how their portfolio companies have grown during these partnerships.

To see the complete list, go to: https://www.inc.com/founder-friendly-investors/2023

Introduced in 2019, the Founder-Friendly Investors list quickly established itself as one of Inc.’s most resourceful franchises. It has become a go-to guide for entrepreneurs who want to grow their companies while retaining an ownership stake.

The November 2023 issue of Inc. magazine is available online now at https://www.inc.com/magazine and will be on newsstands beginning October 31.

About Inc.

The world’s most trusted business-media brand, Inc. offers entrepreneurs the knowledge, tools, connections, and community they need to build great companies. Its award-winning multiplatform content reaches more than 50 million people each month across a variety of channels including websites, newsletters, social media, podcasts, and print. Its prestigious Inc. 5000 list, produced every year since 1982, analyzes company data to recognize the fastest-growing privately held businesses in the United States. The global recognition that comes with inclusion in the 5000 gives the founders of the best businesses an opportunity to engage with an exclusive community of their peers, and the credibility that helps them drive sales and recruit talent. The associated Inc. 5000 Conference is part of a highly acclaimed portfolio of bespoke events produced by Inc. For more information, visit www.inc.com.

About Kayne Anderson Growth Capital:

Kayne Anderson Growth Capital, the Los Angeles-based dedicated growth capital strategy of Kayne Anderson, is a leading provider of equity and debt capital solutions and connections to lower middle market, privately held, high growth, enterprise software and tech-enabled service businesses in North America. The team has developed a durable and repeatable investment strategy and process for applying its stage expertise through sourcing and investing in companies at an early inflection point, adding value and scaling through organic growth and M&A, and exiting these must-have assets to strategics & financial sponsors. Kayne Anderson Growth Capital seeks to partner with driven entrepreneurs and provide capital to high growth companies at a transformative point in their life cycle in the following industries: media & telecommunications, supply chain & logistics, financial technology, healthcare IT, security, compliance & infrastructure, and business process outsourcing & automation. For more information, please visit www.kayneanderson.com/growth-capital/.

Important note: This award was compiled by submission and nomination process; there was a fee associated with putting forth the nomination. Winners are determined through interview process with Inc. Business Media, and are awarded annually. Eligibility is based on quantitative and qualitative factors and is not necessarily related to the quality of the investment advice.