Jack Leeuw

Jack Vander Leeuw is a Charlotte-based private-equity and private-credit investor with roughly 18 years of institutional lower-to-middle-market M&A experience. He graduated from Georgetown University with a degree in business (BSBA, business management). He began his career as an investment banking analyst at BB&T Capital Markets, then became an Associate at Gladstone Investment Corporation, a publicly traded BDC focused on lower-middle-market buyouts.

Before joining Capitala, Vander Leeuw was a Principal on the corporate development team at Neustar, Inc., where he executed mergers and acquisitions, debt financings, divestitures, equity investments, joint ventures, and other partnership transactions — both domestically and internationally — in the information-technology sector.

He joined Capitala Group, a Charlotte-based private-credit and equity manager, in 2016. There he rose from Vice President to Director and, in January 2025, to Managing Director, serving as a key leader on the investment team — sourcing deals, evaluating opportunities, and structuring control buyouts, unitranche debt, structured junior capital, and minority equity investments. Across his career he reports having closed 42 platform transactions representing more than $2.7 billion in aggregate enterprise value.

In early 2026 he founded Token Capital Group, an AI-native, thesis-driven independent sponsor pursuing lower-middle-market acquisitions. The firm's name reflects its philosophy: "In AI, a 'token' is the smallest unit of actionable information. We invest the same way." Token Capital embeds AI as a foundational layer across sourcing, diligence, and post-close value creation, targeting essential businesses where AI-driven operational improvement remains largely untapped.

• Model: AI-native independent sponsor — deal-by-deal capital rather than a committed blind-pool fund; control-oriented lower-middle-market buyouts.
• Size: Target companies with $2M–$10M EBITDA; historically deals up to hundreds of millions in enterprise value.
• Thesis in his own framing: "Enduring Demand × Intelligent Automation" — buy essential, non-discretionary businesses and use AI as the value-creation lever.
• What makes him say yes: essential/non-discretionary products or services; businesses requiring physical products, movement, or work; largely manual operations with a clear AI transformation path; operational complexity that serves as a competitive moat; and aligned seller dynamics (founders/family owners seeking a good-faith steward for their business).
• Instruments (from PE background): control buyouts, unitranche debt, structured/junior capital, and minority equity.
• On the strategy broadly, he has publicly argued that "the independent sponsor model isn't fringe" — signaling conviction in deal-by-deal sponsorship as a serious lower-middle-market approach.