Eerik Giles

Eerik Giles is a partner and co-founder of Navigation Capital Partners (NCP), an Atlanta-based private equity firm. The firm was formed in 2006 when a team of former Mellon Ventures partners — with backing from Goldman Sachs — acquired the private equity portfolio of Mellon Ventures. NCP has historically focused on lower-middle-market niche manufacturing and services businesses across the Southeast, Mid-Atlantic and Midwest, targeting companies with enterprise values below roughly $75 million and revenues under about $150 million. Over time the firm broadened its platform toward high-growth, middle-market operating companies throughout the South, using direct portfolio investments, co-investments, secondaries, fund investments, and dedicated SPAC operations.

Before co-founding Navigation, Giles was a vice president at Mellon Ventures, a roughly $1.4 billion private equity firm affiliated with Mellon Financial Corporation, where he focused on growth-capital investments and buyouts across a range of industries. While there he served on the boards of numerous portfolio companies, including L.E. Technologies, Leeann Chin, Physicians Endoscopy, and Security Services of America.

Earlier in his career, Giles worked in investment banking at Legg Mason, focusing on sell-side M&A and private financings for lower-middle-market and emerging-growth companies, and at Merrill Lynch, where he worked on mergers and acquisitions. He is reported to have earned a Bachelor of Science in economics, with a minor in business administration, from Pennsylvania State University.

At Navigation, Giles has held multiple board and director roles, including at Pecora Corporation (Harleysville, PA — adhesives, sealants and waterproofing products), Metadigm Services (Richmond, KY — meter-related services to electric, water and gas utilities), Technical Innovation (Norcross, GA — audio-visual systems integrator, prior to its sale), and Computex Technology Solutions (Texas-based IT solutions/MSP).

• Invests in control and growth transactions in the lower and middle market — buyouts, growth capital, recapitalizations, and industry consolidations ("platform build") — rather than seed-stage venture bets.
• Historically targeted niche manufacturing and services businesses with modest enterprise values (under ~$75M) and revenues under ~$150M, concentrated in the Southeast, Mid-Atlantic and Midwest.
• Backs platform roll-ups: e.g., NCP's utility-services platform, launched with the acquisition of Specialized Technical Services, was explicitly designed to "quickly broaden the scope of services" offered to utilities through a series of add-on acquisitions.
• More recently expanded into direct/co-investments, secondaries, fund investments, and SPACs, taking portfolio companies public via special-purpose acquisition vehicles.
• Prefers companies where operational improvement and consolidation can drive value, often installing experienced operating executives (e.g., a new CEO from SM&P Utility Resources at STS).