The Documents
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Our best deals start with an introduction. Two kinds are gold.
Fire and security, HVAC, plumbing and drainage, electrical, lift maintenance, grounds and waste: profitable, owner-run service businesses making £500k to £3m a year. If you know an owner who might one day want real money off the table without walking away, we would love to meet them.
Regional accountants, brokers and corporate finance boutiques, CEO and exit coaches, industry bodies and trade associations, insurance brokers, trade suppliers and wholesalers, bank relationship managers, wealth managers and solicitors. Anyone who spends their week with the owners of these businesses is someone we should know.
Introductions are rewarded, not just appreciated: through our carry-for-contribution model, anyone who introduces a deal we go on to complete shares in the outcome. One email is enough: nico@tatu-capital.com.
What we do and how we do it, answered plainly. The documents above go deeper.
Tatu is a lower mid-market independent sponsor. We acquire profitable UK service businesses in the gap between venture capital and private equity: too steady for venture, too small for debt-led private equity. We buy off market, with equity, one deal at a time.
Recession-resilient and AI-resilient service sectors: work that survives the cycle and cannot be done from behind a screen. Our target industries are best thought of as ‘man in a van’ sectors e.g. fire and security, HVAC, end of life, and neighbouring trades such as facilities management, plumbing and drainage, and lift and escalator maintenance.
Roughly £500k to £3m of EBITDA, and cash-generative rather than simply profitable on paper. This is the band where the supply of good businesses is thickest and the supply of capital is thinnest.
Each deal is funded through its own dedicated SPV. Investors choose deal by deal rather than committing to a blind pool: every opportunity comes with its own investment case, and participation in one deal carries no obligation to the next.
The owner sells a majority at a fair price, takes real money off the table, and rolls 25% to 50% back into the same shares our investors hold. Both sides are paid at the same exit on the same terms, which is the strongest alignment mechanism we know of: nobody rolls a quarter to a half of their life’s work into a business they secretly doubt.
Off market, through two engines that feed each other. A network of advisers, operators and introducers brings us businesses before they reach a process, and a proprietary data engine built on Companies House filings watches every UK business that fits the mandate, flagging each one the moment it qualifies. The network tells us who might sell; the engine tells us who is worth buying.
Sparingly, and never the covenant-heavy kind that dictates decisions. Our ceiling at entry is around 1x EBITDA, and only where the business can service it comfortably in a conservative case. Debt is earned, not assumed: once a platform is proven, it becomes a tool for bolt-ons and investment, never a substitute for performance.
The owner keeps running the business; we resource them. A 100-day plan written directly from diligence stands up institutional reporting and a stronger finance function, and our operating partners sit behind the owner on specific missions: go-to-market and pricing, AI and data, and the numbers. We describe the posture as the caddy, not the golfer.
Every deal is built from day one towards a sale in three to five years, once the business is ready for mid-market private equity or a trade buyer: institutional reporting, a second tier of management, contracted recurring revenue and a growth plan that is already working.