Matt Steve

Matt Steve is a career finance professional with investment experience spanning nearly 50 lower-middle-market transactions worth more than $700 million in aggregate value, across the full capital structure — control equity, minority equity, mezzanine debt, and senior debt. He is the Managing Partner of West Allen Capital, a private equity independent-sponsor platform he built to acquire and operate niche manufacturing and distribution businesses in the lower middle market. He currently also serves as a Managing Director at SI Private Capital, where he focuses on business development, deal execution, and portfolio management while continuing to manage West Allen's existing portfolio and pursue new platform acquisitions.

Before founding West Allen Capital (established in 2019), Matt was a Partner at Fox Three Partners, a Virginia-based private equity firm that acquired lower-middle-market businesses; West Allen's earliest deal (Marketing & Research Resources) was completed in support of a Fox Three transaction in 2018. Earlier in his career he was an investment professional at Tecum Capital Partners, a Pittsburgh multi-strategy firm, where he worked on mezzanine debt, minority equity, and majority equity investments, and he held several investment-banking advisory roles focused on middle-market transactions.

Matt began his career at PNC Bank, where he completed the bank's Credit Training Program and worked as a senior lender/credit officer in areas including insurance and asset securitization credit. He earned an MBA from the University of Pittsburgh's Joseph M. Katz Graduate School of Business and a BS from Westminster College. He originally built his career in Pittsburgh and has since relocated to the Tampa Bay area of Florida, where West Allen Capital is now headquartered (P.O. Box 633, Tarpon Springs, FL).

• Control-equity buyouts, not venture/angel checks: "West Allen Capital is a private equity firm supported by institutional and family office capital that makes control equity investments in privately held or family-owned businesses in the lower middle market. We seek to partner with strong management teams to generate systematic growth for our portfolio companies and create value for our investors."
• Size criteria: Revenue > $7.5M; EBITDA ~$2.0–$8.0M; EBITDA margin > 10%; customer concentration with top customer < 20% of revenue.
• Sectors: Primary focus on chemicals, packaging, manufacturing, and distribution; secondary consideration for business services — favoring businesses with "strong secular trends."
• Business quality: Seeks to be the first institutional capital in; wants predictable and defensible cash flows, some recurring revenue, and easy-to-understand business models.
• Transaction types: Exit/succession planning, recapitalizations, management buyouts, and corporate divestitures.
• Hold period & flexibility: Target holds of roughly 5–7 years; the firm emphasizes that its family-office capital base has "no pre-determined investment horizon," offering flexibility to sellers.
• Value creation: Focuses on organic growth — helping management teams execute growth initiatives that had been identified but not previously pursued.
• Geography: Companies east of the Rocky Mountains.