Understanding how long hold investors value your business and generate returns.
Request the guide ↓If you run a software company doing between $1 million and $20 million in revenue, you’ve gotten the email. Some version of “we’re a permanent capital partner” or “we never sell what we buy.” Permanent equity firms, originally Constellation Software’s model and now copied by dozens of others, acquire software companies and hold them forever. No second sale, no five-year clock, no plan to flip you to the next owner.
That changes everything about how they behave. A private equity firm’s return comes from selling you again. A permanent equity firm’s return comes only from what your business earns after they buy it, so their price discipline, their diligence questions, and how they run your company after close all look different from a traditional buyer’s.
We interviewed a dozen active permanent equity buyers, including Beacon, Harris, CORA Group, Embrace, EXA Capital, and Solen Software Group, and mapped the broader field of 50+ firms working this model. Our permanent equity field guide shares what we learned: What they buy, what they pay, and what makes them walk.
Most founders can’t tell these firms apart until they’re already in a process. This guide tells you which one is emailing you, and whether it’s worth a reply.
The investment bar every permanent equity firm applies: retention, recurring revenue, and the “system of record” test that kills most deals before price ever comes up.
How these firms make money without a future sale, and what that means for the multiple they can offer you.
Named buyer profiles: What each firm pays, who it fits, and what gives them pause, including a look inside Constellation Software’s nine operating groups and Valsoft’s seven, so you know who you’re actually negotiating with.
Where public market multiples have landed in 2026, and what that means for the ceiling on what any private buyer can pay.
Two sets of questions to run on the buyer: The ones about your deal, and the harder ones that borrow the lens their own investors use on them.
Tell us where to send it. The guide lands in your inbox within a minute.
Check your inbox in the next minute. If it hasn’t landed, look in promotions or spam, or write to info@alkalipartners.com and we’ll send it directly.
Alkali Partners is a senior-led sell-side M&A advisory for founder-led software companies. If you want a fuller read on which of these buyers, or others, would look at your company specifically, write to info@alkalipartners.com.