Chris Blythe

Chris Blythe is a Partner at Potomac Equity Partners, a Washington, D.C.-based private equity firm. The firm says he has more than twenty years of middle-market private equity experience, and its 2019 promotion announcement states that he joined Potomac Equity in 2013 and has been responsible for new investment opportunity origination, transaction execution, and portfolio company oversight.

Before Potomac Equity, Blythe was a Vice President at Brockway Moran & Partners, a Boca Raton-based middle-market investment firm with more than $1.3 billion under management. At Brockway Moran, he worked in the business services and consumer sectors and served on the boards of Pennant Foods and Pacific Crane Maintenance Company.

Earlier in his career, Blythe was an Associate at Willis Stein & Partners in Chicago, where he worked on transactions in information technology, healthcare, and manufacturing. He began his career at Harris Williams & Co., the Richmond, Virginia-based middle-market investment bank focused on sell-side M&A advisory.

Blythe holds an M.B.A. from the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia and is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Washington & Lee University.

• Potomac Equity focuses on small to mid-market opportunities, defined by the firm as transactions with enterprise values from $10 million to $150 million.
• The firm typically seeks control transactions where it can acquire 51% or greater ownership.
• Potomac targets companies in business services, education and training, healthcare, information services, and software and technology.
• The firm’s stated target company profile is businesses with leading products and services, strong management teams, and the potential for its capital and operating collaboration to accelerate long-term growth and performance.
• Potomac’s brochure says the firm expects returns to come primarily from “the successful realization of growth opportunities and operational improvements, rather than financial engineering.”
• The firm says it uses modest leverage so portfolio companies can continue pursuing growth, and that each Potomac Equity team member personally invests in every completed transaction.
• Potomac is explicitly open to inbound deal flow and operating-executive introductions, and says it pays success-based fees for completed investments introduced by buy-side transaction intermediaries.