Argentum Named to Inc.’s Founder-Friendly Investors List for a 5th Straight Year

New York, NY, October 29, 2024 – For a fifth straight year, Argentum has been named to Inc.’s Founder-Friendly Investors list. The annual list from Inc. honors the private equity, venture capital, and debt firms that have been recognized by founders as trusted and collaborative partners, and have the best track records of success backing entrepreneurs.

These founders and entrepreneurs include the team at LAUNCH, an Argentum portfolio company and the leading provider of turnkey modification, maintenance, and technical workforce solutions to the aviation industry, serving many of the world’s largest OEMs, airlines, and MRO service centers.

“From the onset of our partnership, Argentum has been instrumental in LAUNCH’s rapid growth and successful buy-and-build strategy,” said Mike Guagenti, Co-founder and CEO of LAUNCH.  “As a proactive, thoughtful, and founder-friendly partner, Argentum directly originated, negotiated, structured, and supported the execution of several of our key acquisitions, partnerships, and strategic initiatives.  Argentum has worked tirelessly and closely with our team to accelerate LAUNCH’s momentum, enhance our ability to meet our customers’ needs, and build the market leader in our industry – all while trusting and empowering the LAUNCH team to maintain majority ownership and operational control of our company.  Argentum’s level of business development support and overall value-add have gone far beyond what my co-founders and I had expected from a minority investment partner, and have been invaluable as we’ve grown organically and via acquisitions.”

“Argentum has helped founder-led, bootstrapped, closely-held, and family-owned business services and B2B software companies scale, pursue strategic add-on acquisitions, and achieve ownership liquidity goals for over 30 years,” said Daniel Raynor, Managing Partner and Co-founder of Argentum.  “As demonstrated by our successful partnership with LAUNCH, we serve as a founder-friendly and proactive minority equity partner for capital efficient entrepreneurs who are aiming to grow and execute a targeted buy-and-build strategy in the lower middle-market – but do not want to incur the significant dilution, change of ownership, and reduction of operational autonomy that typically accompany investments from control-oriented private equity and buyout funds.”

“The Argentum team is honored that founders and entrepreneurs have continued to recognize our collaborative and partnership-oriented approach by naming us to the Inc. Founder-Friendly Investors list for five consecutive years,” added Walter Barandiaran, Managing Partner and Co-founder of Argentum.  “It’s been our privilege to serve as value-added partners alongside over 100 business services, tech-enabled services, and B2B software companies, as many of these firms have significantly scaled and become leading players in their industries through acquisitions and organic growth.”

Please visit https://argentumgroup.com/testimonials/ for additional testimonials from founders and CEOs who have partnered with Argentum.

About Inc.

Inc. is the leading media brand and playbook for the entrepreneurs and business leaders shaping our future. Through its journalism, Inc. aims to inform, educate, and elevate the profile of our community: the risk-takers, the innovators, and the ultra-driven go-getters who are creating our future. Inc.’s award-winning work achieves a monthly brand footprint of more than 40 million across a variety of channels, including events, digital, print, video, podcasts, newsletters, and social media. Its proprietary Inc. 5000 list, produced every year since its launch as the Inc. 100 in 1982, analyzes company data to rank the fastest-growing privately held businesses in the United States. The recognition that comes with inclusion on this and other prestigious Inc. lists, such as Female Founders and Power Partners, gives the founders of top businesses the opportunity to engage with an exclusive community of their peers, and credibility that helps them drive sales and recruit talent. For more information, visit www.inc.com.

About Argentum

Argentum is a New York-based growth equity firm that has helped bootstrapped and founder-led B2B services ($5 million to $50 million in revenues) and software ($5 million to $25 million in revenues) companies accelerate growth and execute buy-and-build strategies for over 30 years.  The firm provides capital to scale organic initiatives, fund acquisitions, and / or generate shareholder liquidity.  Argentum has invested in over 100 companies, supported more than 200 add-on acquisitions, been named to Inc’s Founder Friendly Investors list for multiple years, and received the U.S. SBA’s SBIC of the Year award.  Argentum fills the growing gap between early-stage venture capital investors and later stage growth equity / private equity firms by targeting capital-efficient companies seeking $5 million to $15 million of equity capital.