About SEE

You should know who is sitting on the other side of the table.

Exploring ownership, governing a transaction or putting capital behind a first-time buyer are consequential decisions. You are entitled to know who built the channel—and why.

Why we built SEE →

What we are

An umbrella coalition for a participation problem.

SEE Acumen Capital is an umbrella coalition and co-GP platform created by independent sponsors to bring underrepresented operators into the lower-middle-market M&A ecosystem as owners.

For transactions completed under the umbrella, SEE contributes credentialed operators, acquisition opportunities, capital relationships and governed transaction infrastructure. A member independent sponsor leads the seller relationship, LOI, negotiations, diligence judgment and capital raise; SEE participates as co-GP. Member sponsors’ unrelated transactions remain outside the umbrella.

What we do

Credential readiness before transaction assignment
Govern operator-to-deal alignment
Structure stage-gated diligence and evidence
Preserve risk, mitigation and decision provenance
Carry underwriting logic into 18-month post-close governance

What we are not

Not an executive search or operator-placement firm
Not the sole independent sponsor leading every transaction
Not governance infrastructure for every unrelated deal of a member sponsor
Not a substitute for sponsor or capital-partner judgment
Not a training program with automatic transaction access

Why we built it

The strategy worked. The instrument was incomplete.

My mother went to work at the Missouri Pacific Railroad in 1964. She had been trained in keypunch and placed inside a company that had never employed a Black person. She lasted two years under conditions I will never have to work in, and then the job ended.

She walked out with the wages she had been paid and nothing else: no seniority, no pension, no stock, no interest of any kind in a company she had personally desegregated. What she carried out instead was a strategy: get an education so you can get a good job, and do better than me.

I followed that instruction precisely. The limitation was never in the execution. It was in the instrument. A wage is a claim on labor already performed; equity is a claim on what an asset becomes worth. The strategy was not mistaken. It was incomplete as a multigenerational wealth strategy.

SEE is the route from one instrument to the other.

— Janice Thompson, Co-Founder

A channel recruiting from its own network does not broaden because more companies come up for sale. Someone has to build the route in.

Leadership

The people doing the work.

Experience across investment banking, independent sponsorship, private-company governance, corporate operations and transaction execution.

Janice Thompson

Co-Founder

Began in Goldman Sachs’ Investment Banking Division and later served as an operating officer at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City. More than 25 years across corporate strategy, buy-side diligence, portfolio leadership and private-company board service. Author of Do Better Than Me.

Kevin Sample

Co-Founder

Former Managing Director of the Erasmus Advisors Co-Investment Fund, with more than 25 years as an active independent sponsor and prior senior roles in fixed-income and equity sales at TIAA-CREF.

Ken Lewis

Co-Founder

Thirty years in deal sourcing, capital partnerships and structuring across consumer products, financial services, biotechnology, telecommunications, healthcare, insurance and manufacturing.

20+transactionsAggregated career experience of SEE Acumen Capital’s founding sponsors—not transactions closed by the umbrella itself.

$500M+transaction valueAggregated founding-sponsor career experience across prior transactions.

100+capital relationshipsRelationships developed across the founding sponsors’ careers; availability and participation remain transaction-specific.

Three roles. One channel.

Explore the ownership path, bring a transaction into governed execution, or evaluate the architecture as a capital partner.

Choose your path →