Josh Kopowitz
Founder & Managing Partner, Thayer Street Partners. On 1 show, 1 appearance. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
investorfounderexecutivethayerstreet.com ↗
Josh Koplewicz is the founder and managing partner of Thayer Street Partners, a boutique private investment firm providing flexible growth capital. He previously invested across the capital structure within the Special Situations Group at Goldman Sachs.
1shows
1appearances
23statements
3resolved
0supported
0contradicted
0%fully supported
Everything Josh Kopowitz said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Preferred Equity Allows Faster Downside Intervention Than Traditional Bank Lending
“And in fact, we're going to have A more efficient and faster means to protect against adverse scenarios than a lender might who can't be on the board and can't have certain consents around the table and can't step in and help when things go awry because they'r…”
Sub-$200M Businesses Reliant on Cheap Bank Debt Risk Rapid Insolvency
“Having a business that is entirely reliant on dirt cheap, consistent debt financing from a bank is really risky and particularly risky if you are sub two hundred million dollar market cap. So a small gust of wind, a small hiccup, and we saw this with SVB and F…”
Post-GFC Bureaucracy at Goldman Sachs Made Small Deals Difficult
“Mine was a few years after the GFC. It just became really tough to do small deals. Number of committees had grown. There was more pressure to write checks that were larger, that were worth the Time and effort to justify the incremental bureaucracy and addition…”
Private Credit Mega-Funds Leave $20M to $40M Borrowers Underserved
“So you have this massive growth and at the same time consolidation of non-bank private credit. Trillions of dollars being managed by a small number of firms, and in many ways, the growth of those firms is phenomenal, but it's leaving companies behind that need…”
Top 20% of Private Credit Firms Dominate 80% of the Market
“80% of private credit is dominated by 20% of the players. They are investing out of very large funds. That market continues to consolidate. And the focus of most folks in direct lending and private credit is on opportunities that are larger than fifty million …”
Thayer Street Engineers 10% to 14% IRRs Even With Zero Growth
“We're trying to create this base layer where if none of the companies grow, they just stay stable, which is rare. You know, we're already engineering, call it a 10, 12, 14% IOR.”
Conventional Buyouts Typically Leave Founders With Only 10% to 20% Upside
“The win for the seller or entrepreneur is we can be a little more flexible on valuation and they can preserve more ownership versus doing a conventional buyout deal where they may only retain another 10, 20% of the upside on the go forward.”
Scaling From 30 to 100 Employees Drives Most Operational Breakdowns
“The thing that happens most consistently when things go wrong is companies scaling nicely. The company goes from 30 employees to a hundred, and there is a new set of management issues. Layers of the org chart. An executive that's used to having control or bein…”
90% Recurring Revenue Enables Strategic Exits Even if Operational Scaling Fails
“The good news is usually there's 10, 20, 30 other players, many of whom are larger, that want these customers. And the customer relationships are so sticky. These are businesses recurring it with 90 plus percent recurrence. We can still generate a lot of value…”
Thayer Street Targets 60% to 80% LTV With 3x to 4x Upside
“When you blend those all together, we want something where in a downside case, you have a structured return that'll be meaningful. It could generate in and of itself A low to mid teens return where our risk exposure looks and feels like attaching at 10 to 20% …”
Every Thayer Street Employee Receives Carry or Synthetic Carry
“Employees up and down our team are participants in carry or synthetic carry. Every single person in our team.”
Goldman's Special Situations Group Levered Its Balance Sheet 8 to 15 Times
“And our capital was using the firm's balance sheet. So firm would allocate some amount of dollars. It would get levered. Eight to 15 times, and then we put it into companies.”
Cold Outreach Never Worked for Deal Sourcing at Thayer Street
“Finding warm connections for introductions, cold emails never worked for me, meeting people at conferences, meetups, referrals from larger Funds where they thought they saw an interesting deal, but it was too small for them to invest in. So they referred it to…”
Thayer Street Does Not Do Buyouts and Never Attends Auctions
“We're really not doing any buyouts. We've never been at an auction.”
Thayer Street Structures Most Investments as Preferred Equity
“Most of the securities that we're investing in are some form of preferred equity, so structured equity, senior preferred, convertible preferred, participating preferreds.”
Thayer Street Structures Deals Without Back Leverage or Current Amortization
“Oftentimes, while our capital is a little more structured and a little more tailored, we don't invest with back leverage. We don't require current coupons or current amortization. We're focused on the long-term cap gains event. Alongside management.”
Baby Boomers Own Nearly 50% of US Small Businesses
“70 plus million baby boomers own shy of 50% of the small businesses, and a lot of them are retiring and don't have a succession plan.”
Thayer Street Completes 80% of Diligence Before Striking Deals
“Usually when we've struck a deal with someone or found a company that's ready to go, 80% of our diligence is done.”
Thayer Street Structures a 1.5x Minimum Return Across Its Portfolio
“So across our portfolio today, we have just shy of a 1.5 X minimum return.”
Thayer Street Payments Portfolio Company Grew GPV 5x in Four Years
“So that company grew probably four X in terms of top line revenue and another closer to five or six X in terms of Gross processing volume over a four-ish year period.”
Thayer Street Caps Fund Positions at 10% Across 10 to 12 Deals
“When we think about our funds, they are, call it plus or -10 positions, historically, maybe even closer to 12. Maybe we only have 10 or less outstanding at a given time. We have a high degree of recycling in our approach. So the way we think about it is, Plus …”
Individual Owners Hold 90% of the Fragmented Property Management Market
“Property management is 90% fragmented and owned by individual owners.”
Koplewicz Worked as a Levi Strauss Marketing Consultant at Age 11
“My first paid job was actually being a style and marketing consultant for Levi Strauss when I was 11. A stranger heard me talking and recruited me to do this job, and for about two years I got assignments from Levi Strauss company to basically give them my opi…”
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Josh's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 CAPITAL ALLOCATORSLEDGER | Founder & Managing Partner, Thayer Street Partners | 1 | 23 | 0% 0/3 | full record on Capital Allocators → |