Ted Dardani

Ted Dardani is a Founding Partner of Harkness Capital Partners, a New York–based private equity firm (founded 2014) that invests its own capital and operating resources to support the growth of high-quality, lower middle market service companies. He sits on the firm's Investment Committee and takes active board and value-creation roles in portfolio companies. Dardani has spent more than 25 years as an institutional investor focused on service businesses, spanning logistics, specialty financial services, business process outsourcing (BPO), education services, facilities management, rental/equipment services, and consumer services.

Before co-founding Harkness, Dardani was a Partner at Oak Hill Capital Partners in New York, where he helped lead investments in the firm's Business and Financial Services group. Earlier in his career he was a Principal at DB Capital Partners (the private equity arm of Deutsche Bank) and, from 1992 to 1996, a management consultant at McKinsey & Company.

Over his career he has served as a director on numerous portfolio company boards, including Southwest Foodservice Excellence, Kane Is Able (Kane Logistics), the Jacobson Companies, RSC Equipment Rental, ExlService, and Prestige Brands.

Dardani earned a B.A. from Dartmouth College and an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School.

• Invests in lower middle market service businesses — historically companies with roughly $10M–$25M in revenue — that sit at growth "inflection points."
• Concentrates on familiar service verticals: environmental/health & safety, rental services, outsourced services, third-party logistics, testing, and other business & financial services.
• Emphasizes an operationally intensive, hands-on model, pairing investment professionals with a bench of "operating investors" (including seasoned executives) to build management teams, add services, and scale operations after investment.
• Stated firm philosophy centers on partnering with founders and managers — "aligning our economic and financial interests with owners and managers to support win-win outcomes."
• Typically pursues control platform investments (buy-and-build), then supports geographic expansion, new-branch development, and add-on acquisitions.