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Steve Lau & Rameez Ansari form Highland Creek Partners after raising seed capital from investors. Highland’s founders evaluate >15,000 small business targets over 18 months.
Highland acquires DESCO, a leading provider of service management software. Highland Co-founders take over as Co-CEOs to start transforming the business.
Highland develops a new cloud-based platform to drive future growth and rebrands the company as FieldEdge. The new SaaS product is named a Magic Quadrant Leader by Gartner. FieldEdge becomes a 2-time Stevie Awards winner for Sales & Customer Service.
FieldEdge scales significantly from 20 to over 200 employees and enters the next phase of growth, making it a 3-time winner of the Inc. 5000 list of fastest growing companies.
Highland sells FieldEdge to private equity firm Advent International, generating an 8x MOIC and 85% IRR for investors.
Advent merges FieldEdge with Clearent, Coolfront, and TSG to form Xplor Technologies, a multi-billion dollar unicorn. Original investors would have achieved a >17x MOIC at current valuation.
Steve is a serial entrepreneur and has been an active investor in the search space for over 10 years, having personally invested in over 60 search funds.
Steve is currently Co-CEO of AutoLeap, a leading provider of auto repair software backed by venture capitalists, including Bain Capital Ventures. Prior to AutoLeap, Steve served as Co-CEO of FieldEdge, a business he acquired through the search fund model. At FieldEdge, Steve converted the business from on-premise to SaaS and successfully sold the business to Advent International resulting in a top-decile search outcome for investors. Earlier in his career, Steve spent several years in private equity at CPPIB and worked in investment banking at TD Securities.
In 2018, Steve received an EY Entrepreneur of the Year award and in 2019, he was recognized as one of Canada’s Top 40 Under 40. Steve is also a Lecturer at the University of Toronto and holds an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.
Steve has two boys who often drop in on his conference calls, and he enjoys playing squash with Rameez enough to let him win.
Rameez is a Co-Founder of Union Software Group. He is an experienced CEO and investor having led various companies in North America and Asia.
He is also currently the Co-CEO of AutoLeap, a vertically focused B2B SaaS start-up within the auto repair space.
Rameez was formerly the Co-CEO of FieldEdge, which he helped grow more than 5x in 3 years. Earlier in his career, Rameez worked as a management consultant at BCG and in 2018, Rameez received an EY Entrepreneur of the Year award. He has also been actively involved in his family’s power generator business, Synergy Corp., as an advisor and director over the past two decades.
Rameez is a Lecturer at the University of Toronto and holds an MBA from Stanford GSB.
Rameez has a lovely daughter and an energetic son who both undisputedly run the household. Rameez is also quite proud of his winning squash record against Steve (976 to 956).
Daniel comes from a family of entrepreneurs and has spent most of his career investing in private companies and small businesses.
Previously, Daniel came from Franklin Templeton, where he managed Technology and Healthcare investments in private and private equity-backed companies.
Before Franklin, Daniel was part of the leadership team OurTime, a private equity-backed online dating platform. He drove corporate strategy and M&A, helping double revenue over 2 years followed by the eventual sale to Match Group, which generated a 3x MOIC for investors.
Daniel also brings private equity experience from American Capital (acquired by Ares Management) where he focused on small/mid-cap private equity opportunities.
Daniel has a BS in Business Administration from the University of Southern California and an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.
William has always taken an interest in investing and has structured his career investing across asset classes and situations.
Currently, he leads private equity investing at a multi-family office focusing on direct investments of small and lower-middle-market companies backed by Search Funds or Independent Sponsors.
Previously, William covered industrials at Golden Gate Capital where he led special situation investing across a variety of sub-industries. In their flagship deal, his team led the restructuring and ownership of a leading minerals and logistics supplier. William later served on the Board of Directors and oversaw a 3x increase in EBITDA.
Prior to that, he was a research analyst at Oaktree Capital Management and D.E. Shaw where he led investments across a variety of sectors including services, consumer, retail, manufacturing, telecom, hospitality, food, and auto.
William began his career as an Investment Banker at Rothschild. He has a BA in Economics from the University of Virginia and an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.
