OVERVIEW
Hidden Harbor Capital Partners is a private equity firm with an operations soul and intense passion for building great companies. Hidden Harbor brings large-scale, private equity experience and resources to the lower middle market with a focus on value-oriented, operationally intense situations. Our principals are investor operators who have both extensive transaction and operating experience to truly understand your business. As one team, we partner and work hand-in-hand with our portfolio companies to drive business successes.
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OPERATING PRINCIPLES
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A company's biggest asset is good people working as a team, growing in proportion to their talent, and being recognized for that through disproportionately higher compensation and advancement (meritocracy).
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Constant training and improvement have to be ongoing efforts and should permeate our routine.
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Focus and clarity is the essence. It's impossible to be excellent in everything - concentrate on the few things that really matter.
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Keep score – daily. It’s the only way to tell if we are winning or losing. Be maniacal about tracking KPI’s vs. goals.
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Everything has to have an owner with authority and accountability. Debate is good, but in the end, someone has to decide and be held accountable.
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Name, reputation, and brands are precious assets that take decades to build and days to destroy.
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Facts are friendly, sometimes painful. We must be transparent and data-driven (information) to effectively make decisions and minimize conflicts.
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Be paranoid about costs and expenses- the only variables under our control - helps ensure long term survival.
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Constant discontent, a sense of urgency, and zero complacency help ensure a sustainable competitive advantage.
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Hiring people who are better than yourself, training them, challenging them, and retaining them is the main attribution of a manager.
HIDDEN HARBOR VALUE-ADDED COMPETENCIES
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Work collaboratively with high performing management teams to bring their companies to full potential. Use partnership approach beginning with active, strategic involvement at the board level, while leveraging our expertise, resources and core competencies.
Scale Growth Companies
Develop comprehensive framework to translate investment thesis into results, including strategic plan development, key value drivers, key enablers (people, processes and systems) and timelines.
Strategic Value Creation Framework
Optimize cost structure and improve margins. Focus on reducing non-value-added processes, simplify core processes and optimize high-value-added processes for competitiveness. Make short-term investments to achieve longer-term objectives.
Performance Culture/Governance
Develop performance culture using our 5 principles: higher good managers who act like owners, define the 3-5 year investment thesis, make capital work hard, measure only what drives value and create shared incentives around active shareholders. Establish independent boards and upgrade financial systems and controls.
Performance Improvement
Accelerate growth via pricing strategies, customer analytics and clustering, loyalty, salesforce effectiveness and more. Identify new growth areas through product line profitability, geographical and vertical expansion.
Revenue Growth and Enhancement
Improving working capital by accelerating order to cash, inventory management, collections, extended payment terms, CAPEX management and optimizing the capital structure. Also consider asset sales and leasebacks.
Capital Efficiency
Leverage Hidden Harbor's network and deal engine for accretive acquisitions to augment growth. We also bring expertise for post-merger integration and synergy capture.
Strategic Acquisitions
Implement Hidden Harbor's codified execution playbook (aka "Winning") covering everything recruiting and hiring "A" players, KPI reporting to running daily meetings.
Execution Playbook
Use Hidden Harbor's extensive network to ensure top talent and scale management. Provide leadership and management training on private equity and any other unfamiliar areas.
Talent and Human Capital
Optimize capital structure to support growth. Drive sale readiness and provide access to private and public markets.