A private equity firm and a cloud services veteran are preparing to buy multiple MSPs (managed IT services providers). The MSP rollup strategy will involve a "data driven sales enablement engine," according to Periscope Equity and the private equity firm's stated partner, Michael Sterl.
Fast forward to the newly announced MSP acquisition strategy, and the private equity firm has not disclosed how much money it plans to deploy in the managed IT services market.
According to Periscope Equity's website, the private equity firm typically acquires or invests in businesses with $10 million to $50 million in annual revenue, and $2 million to $8 million in EBITDA. Still, it's difficult to find independent MSPs in the U.S. market that fit those criteria -- as many private equity firms have already discovered.
Michael Sterl: Building a Better MSP Sales Enablement Platform?
It sounds like telecom and cloud services veteran Michael Sterl will be the point person on Periscope Equity's MSP acquisitions and overall platform strategy. Sterl has extensive experience across the cloud and telecom sectors, and with recurring revenue businesses. His experience includes:
- Co-founder of CloudOptik, which develops a proprietary data platform to help service providers maximize sales, marketing, financial, and technology capabilities.
- CEO of Carve Digital, which develops data sales solutions for telecom and cloud communications service providers, master agents and channel partners.
- Simple Signal, a unified communications service provider that Vonage acquired. At Vonage, Sterl shifted to VP of indirect channel sales.
We've reached out to Periscope Equity and Sterl for additional comment, and will update this article if/when we have more details to share.
