Ken Firtel

Ken Firtel is a Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Transom Capital Group, a Los Angeles–based, operations-focused private equity firm he helped launch in 2008. At Transom he leads the Business Development team that sources investment opportunities and sits on the firm's investment committee. The firm has grown to manage roughly $1.5 billion across a series of four flagship funds, pursuing a value-oriented strategy focused on "orphaned," undermanaged middle-market businesses—often corporate carve-outs and lender-owned companies—that it improves through its proprietary ARMOR℠ value-creation process.

Before founding Transom, Firtel was an investment professional at Platinum Equity, where he was responsible for evaluating, structuring, and negotiating transactions, as well as transitioning and overseeing the operations of portfolio companies. Earlier in his career he was an associate in the Transactions Department of the law firm O'Melveny & Myers, giving him a legal and deal-structuring foundation that he carries into Transom's complex carve-out and special-situations deals.

Firtel holds a B.A. in Economics from Yale University, an M.S. in Industrial Relations–Business Studies from the London School of Economics, and a J.D. from the USC Gould School of Law. At Yale he played Division I soccer. Outside of investing, he serves on the board of Angel City Sports, which supports athletic opportunities for people with physical disabilities, and is an avid fly fisherman. He cites "perseverance, creativity, and team collaboration" as critical components of success.

• Operations over financial engineering: Transom describes itself as an "operationally focused" PE firm that drives returns through an in-house team of functional experts rather than leverage alone—targeting roughly 3x returns.
• Buy complexity, fix it: The firm deliberately seeks "situational complexity"—corporate carve-outs, lender-owned businesses, end-of-life PE/growth-equity investments, and founder-owned/bespoke opportunities.
• Six operational levers (the ARMOR℠ process): salesforce transformation, digital transformation, product development, supply-chain restructuring, cost reduction, and cultural transformation—applied through "deep-dive, ongoing engagement" rather than a 100-day plan.
• Hard size/structure criteria: equity control required; North America HQ; flexible across industries; targets up to ~$1.0B revenue, ~$75M adjusted EBITDA, and ~$600M enterprise value.
• Sectors: industrial, consumer, business services, and technology.
• In Firtel's words (Fund IV, 2024): "Fund IV is off to a tremendous start with our team having already closed three platform investments, all of which we believe are positioned to perform strongly, and we have an expanding pipeline of promising future opportunities."