Carl Press

Carl Press is a Partner at Thoma Bravo, the software-focused private equity firm, where he founded and co-leads the firm's Explore platform. He joined Thoma Bravo in 2015 and is based in San Francisco. In 2020 he spearheaded the launch of Explore as a deliberate move to bring Thoma Bravo back toward the middle market — targeting emerging software category leaders, typically with under $100 million in revenue, that are positioned to scale. The Explore funds make equity investments generally in the $50M–$250M range; Explore Fund II raised roughly $1.8 billion as part of Thoma Bravo's $32.4 billion fundraise completed in December 2022.

Before founding Explore, Press built his career across technology investing and finance. Prior to Thoma Bravo, he was a technology investor at HighBar Partners (Menlo Park), an associate in the special situations group at Oaktree Capital Management (Los Angeles), and an analyst at UBS Investment Bank (San Francisco). This blend of growth-equity, distressed/special-situations, and investment-banking experience underpins his middle-market software focus.

Press holds an MBA from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, where he was named a Palmer Scholar (top of his class), and a B.S. in Electrical Engineering, with honors, from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He has also served as vice chair of the board of trustees at SLS Preschool.

His work has earned industry recognition: The M&A Advisor named him Private Equity Professional of the Year in 2025, and GrowthCap named him to its Top 40 Under 40 Growth Investors list in 2021.

• Stage/strategy: Lower-and-middle-market software, the "smaller end" of Thoma Bravo's spectrum — emerging category leaders, often under ~$100M in revenue, that need a partner to scale.
• Check size: ~$50M–$250M equity per deal through the Explore platform.
• Sectors: Application software, infrastructure, cybersecurity, fintech, healthcare IT, and information technology broadly.
• What makes him say yes: Explore was explicitly created to return Thoma Bravo to its middle-market roots and back high-growth software businesses earlier in their scaling journey, applying the firm's operational playbook to smaller companies than its flagship buyout funds target.
• Personal angel activity (limited): Aggregator data shows a single early-stage angel investment in LoungeBuddy (2015), so founders should treat him as an institutional PE investor rather than a recurring angel.