Rick Corcoran

Rick Corcoran is a co-founder and Partner of Slate Capital Group, a lower-middle-market private equity firm he helped establish in 2004. Slate acquires or invests in a small number of companies each year (typically one or two) and takes an operationally hands-on approach, backing established businesses in business services, distribution, and light manufacturing across the eastern U.S. The firm's principals invest their own capital alongside wealthy individuals and family offices, giving it the flexibility of an independent-sponsor / patient-capital model rather than a traditional fixed-life fund.

Corcoran's career blends investing with hands-on operating roles. Before Slate he co-founded NVC, LLC, a mid-market private buyout firm, and co-founded, served as COO, and was President of Let's Dish! Mid-Atlantic, a retail meal-assembly chain in Maryland and Virginia. He has also stepped into operating leadership at portfolio and related companies, including as CEO of CoastTec (a UPS/battery-backup refurbishment and repair business), interim CEO of First Source, LLC (a candy and specialty-foods distributor), and as a founder of retail furniture and landscaping/house-painting businesses. Earlier in his career he worked at The Boston Consulting Group (including its private equity practice, with casework in retail, consumer goods, healthcare, and media), Procter & Gamble (sales account manager), and Excite@Home (business development).

He is a 1995 graduate of Princeton University and earned his M.B.A. from Stanford University's Graduate School of Business in 2000. He has served on numerous boards, including CoastTec, Let's Dish!, First Source, Horizon Facilities Services, Nova Technologies, Cumberland Diversified Metals, and Vertical Mechanical Group, as well as community organizations such as Children's Scholarship Fund Baltimore, the Cooperative for Education (Guatemala), and formerly as a Trustee of The Maryland Zoo in Baltimore.

Outside of work, Corcoran is an endurance athlete who competed in the 1999 Eco-Challenge adventure race and remains active in endurance sports and basketball. He has two young-adult daughters.

• Invests in established, profitable lower-middle-market companies — not startups. Slate targets businesses with roughly $3–30M in annual EBITDA/cash flow.
• Prefers "simple," durable businesses: stable or recurring revenue, sustainable margins, high return on invested capital, limited capital intensity, significant barriers to entry, and non-cyclical industries.
• Pursues a range of transaction structures — growth capital, acquisition/buyout capital, management buyouts, leveraged acquisitions, and recapitalizations.
• Concentrated, operationally intensive model: typically closes only 1–2 platform deals per year and stays deeply involved, often building national "buy-and-build" platforms (e.g., roll-ups in metal-deck/structural-steel distribution).
• Patient capital: principals invest their own money alongside individual and family-office investors and are comfortable with long holding periods rather than fixed fund timelines.
• Sector concentration in business services, distribution, and select light manufacturing, focused on the eastern half of the U.S.