Lamont Partners measures success by the durability of the technology businesses we rebuild.
The following examples illustrate how Lamont Partners has intervened in complex, distressed situations to restore operational health. By focusing on structural integrity rather than short-term engineering, we have helped these European tech companies transition from uncertainty to stability, and ultimately, to independent growth.
Lamont Partners identified a Brussels-based SaaS provider serving the professional services sector as a classic post-growth asset: high recurring revenue and high switching costs, but depressed valuation due to operational stagnation. The company was burning cash despite a loyal user base, weighed down by an 18-month feature backlog and onboarding cycles exceeding 120 days. We structured the majority buyout to provide liquidity to weary founders while retaining key technical talent, entering at a valuation that reflected current distress but offered significant upside upon operational correction.
We moved immediately to protect the asset’s value. Lamont Partners enforced a structural separation between product development and professional services, empowering a new Chief Product Officer to halt non-strategic customisation. We re-engineered the revenue engine, replacing ad-hoc onboarding with a standardised, SLA-driven protocol. Crucially, we deployed forensic unit economic analysis to identify and exit unprofitable legacy cohorts. This decisive rationalisation allowed us to realign pricing models, ensuring that capital was allocated only to high-margin growth areas rather than servicing technical debt.
Within 14 months, the company transitioned from a monthly cash burn to a sustainable low double-digit EBITDA margin, validating our entry valuation. By reducing onboarding time by 35%, we accelerated cash collection and improved working capital metrics. The business is now a self-funding, profitable niche leader with a clean balance sheet and a scalable operating model. This turnaround has positioned the asset for a future exit at a multiple reflecting its renewed quality of earnings and strategic value in the Benelux market.
Northern Italy Industrial IoT Carve-Out
We targeted a non-core industrial IoT division within a large European manufacturer, recognising an asset trapped in a corporate structure that stifled its commercial potential. While the technology was proprietary and deeply embedded in customer operations, the unit lacked standalone financial visibility and was burdened by corporate overhead allocations. We executed a complex carve-out, acquiring the division at a compelling entry price. Our thesis relied on establishing the unit as an independent entity, enabling it to pursue higher-margin external customers rather than serving only the parent company’s internal needs.
The immediate priority was decoupling the business from its parent infrastructure without disrupting service. Lamont Partners established a dedicated commercial leadership team to drive external sales, moving the company away from a cost-centre mentality. We implemented a fit-for-purpose ERP rather than replicating the parent’s complex systems to gain visibility into true product profitability, revealing that 28% of engineering resources were being spent on low-value internal projects. We redirected this capacity toward high-margin external use cases. Concurrently, we optimised the cost structure by renegotiating supplier contracts independent of the parent group, establishing a leaner, more agile operating base.
The transition to independence unleashed significant commercial energy. In the first 18-24 months of standalone operation, external revenue grew by approximately 23%, reducing customer concentration risk. The clarity provided by the new financial systems allowed us to improve gross margins by 400 basis points through better pricing discipline and resource allocation. Today, the company operates as a profitable, high-growth independent player in the Northern Italian industrial tech ecosystem, attracting interest from strategic buyers seeking established IoT platforms.
DACH Region Cybersecurity Platform
We identified a promising but capital-inefficient cybersecurity vendor in the DACH region, operating in a high-demand vertical but suffering from liquidity strain. The company had achieved impressive technical milestones and secured marquee enterprise clients, yet its aggressive pursuit of top-line growth had created a bloated cost base and a fragmented sales organisation. Lamont Partner’s minority investment was structured to provide the necessary runway for restructuring without diluting the founders’ incentive to execute. The thesis was grounded in the belief that the core product was robust enough to grow without the excessive cash burn associated with its current go-to-market strategy.
We partnered with management to instil financial rigour immediately. Lamont Partners introduced a weekly 13-week cash flow forecast, transforming cash management from a quarterly reporting exercise into a daily operational tool. We conducted a deep audit of the sales funnel, revealing that the “enterprise” sales team was chasing too many low-probability leads. We restructured the commercial function, reducing headcount by 15% while narrowing focus to the highest-converting industry verticals. Simultaneously, we rationalised the product portfolio, deprecating three non-core modules that consumed disproportionate R&D resources for negligible revenue return.
The shift from “growth at all costs” to “disciplined scaling” stabilised the business within two quarters. By focusing sales efforts, win rates improved materially (by c.27% on a relative basis) while customer acquisition costs (CAC) decreased significantly. The rationalisation of R&D and sales operations reduced monthly burn by over 36%, significantly extending runway and removing near-term funding pressure. Following a period of deliberate stabilisation, the business in now cash-flow positive and growing at a sustainable double digit rate, proving that financial discipline acts as an accelerator for high-quality technology assets in the DACH market.
Nordic Marketplace Platform
Lamont Partners acquired control of a Nordic vertical marketplace and payments platform that had dominated its niche but hit a revenue plateau. The company had successfully captured its domestic market but failed to execute on international expansion, resulting in three consecutive years of flat growth and deteriorating unit economics. We saw an opportunity to acquire a cash-generative asset at a value multiple, with clear potential to unlock growth not through new inventions, but through rigorous execution of a proven playbook in adjacent geographies.
We treated the stagnant international operations as a restart rather than a continuation. Lamont Partners paused all new market entries to conduct a forensic review of existing country performance. We identified that the “one-size-fits-all” expansion strategy was failing due to a lack of localisation in payment methods and customer support. We restructured the management team, bringing in a CEO with specific cross-border scaling experience. Operationally, we integrated a new payment gateway that reduced transaction friction, and we centralised the fragmented marketing spend to drive higher ROI on customer acquisition across all active territories.
The strategic reset broke the revenue ceiling. By optimising the conversion funnel and localising the user experience, we achieved a 14% increase in transaction volume, primarily driven by improved conversion and reduced payment friction, within the first year of ownership. The centralised marketing approach improved efficiency, driving a 16% reduction in customer acquisition costs. The business has since returned to double-digit revenue growth and expanded its EBITDA margins from 17% to 23% through improved marketing efficiency and platform leverage. The business is now well positioned for strategic interest from pan-European marketplace and payment platforms, demonstrating the value of disciplined execution over dispersed ambition.