Michal Petrzela
Managing Director
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- Full Name
- Michal Petrzela
- Title
- Partner, Managing Director (Member of the Investment Committee and Management Committee)
- Firm
- Lightyear Capital
- Firm Type
- Private equity (buyout & growth capital) — not an angel/seed investor
- Investment Stage
- Control buyouts and growth equity in established, cash-generative companies (Fund V targets financial-services businesses with roughly $30M–$40M+ of EBITDA)
- Check Size
- Mid-market equity checks drawn from ~$1B+ funds (Fund V ≈ $1.6B; firm AUM ≈ $8.1B as of Dec. 31, 2025) — undisclosed per-deal size
- Target Company Profile
- Established, profitable companies at the intersection of financial services and technology, healthcare, and business services
- Sector Focus
- Financial services, fintech, insurance, healthcare services, and business/productivity software
- Geographic Focus
- United States (with select North America)
- Location
- New York, New York
Background
Michal Petrzela is a Partner and Managing Director at Lightyear Capital, a New York–based private equity firm founded in 2000 that specializes in financial services, fintech, healthcare, and business-services investing. He sits on both the firm's Investment Committee and Management Committee. He first joined Lightyear as a Summer Associate in 2004 and rejoined the firm full-time in 2005, building a career there of roughly two decades.
Before Lightyear, Petrzela worked at Barclays in London within the Financial Institutions Group, where he helped develop a balance-sheet advisory practice. Earlier, he was at Credit Suisse in New York, also in the Financial Institutions Group, advising on M&A transactions across the United States and Europe. He began his career at Arthur Andersen as a consultant in the Financial Markets Practice.
He holds a B.S. in Accounting and Finance from Syracuse University and an M.B.A. from the Stanford Graduate School of Business. This finance-and-FIG pedigree aligns closely with Lightyear's core thesis of investing "at the nexus of financial services and technology."
In his current role, Petrzela leads and oversees a set of Lightyear portfolio companies — spanning vertical software, healthcare services, and insurance — and serves on their boards, working alongside management teams on strategic, operational, and financial value creation.
Investment Thesis & Focus
- Invests through control buyouts and growth-capital deals in established, profitable companies — not early-stage/seed. Lightyear has completed ~50 investments since 2000 across its funds.
- Core sectors: financial services, fintech, insurance, healthcare services, and business/productivity software. Fund V has been noted to target financial-services companies with EBITDA in the ~$30M–$40M range.
- Backs management teams by bringing "deep domain expertise and a vast network of operating resources," emphasizing partnership and "the joint creation of enduring value."
- On his thesis for vertical software + embedded fintech, Petrzela (re: Vehlo): *"The large U.S. auto repair market, with 158,000 service locations, continues to increase its adoption of software and embedded fintech solutions to enhance customer experience, operations and service revenue."*
- Increasing emphasis on healthcare financial services and workforce-health businesses, reflected in recent deals like CuraLinc.
Notable Investments
- CuraLinc Healthcare — Workforce/employee mental-health and EAP provider (~9M covered lives, 4,200+ clients); Lightyear made a strategic (control) investment closing August 2024.
- Vehlo — Software and embedded-payments platform for auto-repair shops and dealerships; Lightyear joined as a new investor in a June 2022 growth investment. Petrzela is a board member.
- PracticeTek — Healthcare/practice-management software platform; Petrzela has served on the board since ~2021.
- ProfitSolv — Vertical software for professional-services firms (legal, accounting); Petrzela board member since ~2020.
- HealthPlanOne — Medicare-focused health-insurance distribution/services platform in the Lightyear portfolio.
- Inszone Insurance Services — Insurance brokerage platform (Fund V portfolio company).
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