Meet the Bregal Milestone Team
Inspired by ambition, Driven by growth
Europe has a large number of ‘hidden gems’ when it comes to the technology sector. These companies have remained off the radar primarily because they were bootstrapped and didn’t build their empires on typical VC funding. According to the report, “The State of European Tech 2020” *, there were seventeen $1B acquisitions in the European tech sector in 2019 and just one of them had previously raised VC capital. These companies have great potential to become the next tech giants in their respective fields.
Milestone seeks to partner with exceptional founders and entrepreneurs who are at the helm of some of Europe’s most exciting technology champions . Bregal Milestone (BM) understands the specific support that companies at this stage of growth need and has shaped itself as an investor that adds more than just capital. Its value creation team, Milestone Performance Partners (MPP), works alongside portfolio companies to build out management structures and growth plans to reflect the size and scale of the businesses they have become.
BM’s mission is to identify companies with high-growth potential and go all-in to support its ambitious founders across every aspect of growth. Milestone’s origination edge is driven by its diverse, multi-national investment team with deep local networks and credibility across the core regions and underpinned by a tech-enabled sourcing engine called the “Beehive”. The Beehive is a self-developed, proprietary software that enables the Investment Team to identify a rich pipeline of high-quality targets outside of competitive processes.
BM’s values are rooted in the sustainable investment and entrepreneurial spirit of the Brenninkmeijer family which has allowed the foundation and its business arms to continuously grow over many generations. These values also underpin BM’s strong commitment to ESG. Milestone believes that a company’s approach to ESG is a solid indicator of its prospects for long term, sustainable value creation, therefore ESG is integrated throughout the Firm’s investment processes and ownership practices. MPP works closely with each portfolio company in order to assess its ESG performance against a consistent, comprehensive set of criteria, before identifying and planning practical initiatives to improve ESG performance where required.
Started only in July 2018 Bregal Milestone I has been active : the team has already invested in 9 platform companies, 9 add-on investments, and 2 successful exits. Paack, M-Files and Cafeyn are few of the notable investments made by BM in the last twelve months. Paack is a European leading provider of Scheduled, Next-Day and Same-day delivery solutions, offering one of the most advanced technology delivery platforms and networks. M-Files provides an intelligent, repository neutral platform that utilizes metadata and artificial intelligence (AI) to break down information silos and unify systems, data and content across an organization. Cafeyn is Europe’s leading digital media streaming platform delivering its model through a unique B2B2C model.
Bregal Milestone is led by Jan Bruennler, Philippe Lautenberg and Cyrus Shey, a tight-knit group of partners who have collaborated for over 16 years and have a strong track record of successful growth investing in technology.
Along its international investment team, an integral part of BM is their in-house value creation team, called Milestone Performance Partners, led by Rob Hetherington. Rob brings 25 years’ experience in international leadership roles in some of the foremost software and services businesses such as BluePrism, SAP and Accenture. Under his leadership, Milestone Performance Partner provides advice and management support to the companies they invest in. This team, which operates separately to BM’s deal teams, work in close partnership with portfolio companies to drive operational improvements and exceptional performance.
BM is backed by Bregal Investments, a private equity group controlled by the Brenninkmeijer family foundation. Bregal Investments is a global private equity investment firm with investment teams based in London, Munich, New York and Dallas, managing commitments on behalf of several limited partners. Bregal funds have invested over €12 billion since inception in 2002.
European technology sector’s inflection point is here, and we at Bregal Milestone are excited to be a part of it. We feel incredibly humbled when founders choose to work with us and we take this responsibility of adding accelerated value to our partners extremely seriously. With our MPP team and our track record and entrepreneurial spirit, we are incredibly excited about the future for new and existing platform companies.
Visit our site to find out more or connect with us on LinkedIn and lets start the journey together.
Sources: *Here
