Team members

Nicholas Theuerkauf is the Founder and Managing Partner of SilverTree Equity. Nicholas is primarily responsible for deal origination, due diligence, valuation, transaction execution, operational improvements, and portfolio monitoring.

 

Nicholas has deep investing and transaction expertise. Prior to founding SilverTree Equity, Nicholas was an investment professional at HgCapital and Marlin Equity Partners where he focused on the software, technology, and business services sectors. Nicholas began his career at Goldman Sachs in investment banking where he specialised in mergers and acquisitions, debt and equity financings and other strategic advisory initiatives, primarily in the software and technology industries.

 

Nicholas is a German and U.S. national. He earned a dual degree from the University of Pennsylvania and received a B.S. in Economics-Finance from The Wharton School and a B.A. in Economics from the College of Arts and Sciences. He graduated magna cum laude in both degrees.

 

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John Messamore is a Co-Founder and Managing Partner of SilverTree Equity. John is primarily responsible for deal origination, due diligence, valuation, transaction execution, operational improvements, and portfolio monitoring.

 

John has deep investing and transaction expertise. Prior to co-founding SilverTree Equity, John was an investment professional at Advent International where he focused on the software, technology, business services and industrials sectors. John previously served on the boards of Unit4 NV, FinancialForce, Inc. (observer), Equinova (related to Nexi S.p.A.), and ICE S.p.A. Prior to Advent, John held positions at Evercore Partners, Roark Capital Group and Lazard.

 

John is a British and U.S. national. He graduated with distinction from the University of Virginia with B.S. in Commerce, where he received the Edgar F. Shannon award for distinguished leadership and academic achievement.

 

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Benjamin “Benjy” Burditt is an Operating Partner at SilverTree Equity. Benjy has nearly 30 years of experience in strategic, operational, and organisational management. Benjy brings a range of experience to SilverTree, including many years at McKinsey & Company, restructuring, operating, CEO coaching, and private equity experience.

 

Benjy has extensive experience leading enterprise wide transformations in organisational culture, cost leadership, operations, and sales and marketing. He has served on over 15 boards including a number of software and technology and private equity backed companies.

 

Benjy holds an MBA from Yale University and a B.A. from Middlebury College.

 

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Wiebe Willemsen primary responsibilities at SilverTree include due diligence, transaction execution support, and portfolio monitoring.

 

Prior to joining SilverTree, Wiebe worked in investment banking where he specialized in mergers and acquisitions, debt and equity financing and other strategic advisory initiatives.

 

Wiebe is a Dutch national. He earned an MsC from London Business School and a BA in Politics from University College London, where he graduated with a First-Class Honours.

 

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Fred Wakeman is Chairman of the investment committee and executive committee member at SilverTree Equity with more than 30 years of private equity experience primarily in the software and technology sectors.

 

Fred served as Managing Partner and Head of TMT at Advent International, one of the world’s largest private equity firms with more than $100 billion under management. During his 23-year career at Advent, Fred managed Advent’s London and New York offices and served on both Advent’s European and its North American Investment Advisory Committees. Fred led or participated in more than 20 deals including KMD, FinancialForce and Unit4.

 

Fred is currently a founder and Managing Director at Blue Endeavor Ventures, a private investment company focusing on technology and sustainability. He is also the co-founder of the Scale-Up fund, a $25 million philanthropic fund focused on projects targeting climate change and biodiversity.

 

Fred holds a joint degree in Economics and History from the University of California at Berkeley as well as an MBA from Georgetown University

 

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Kirill Tatarinov is an Operating Partner at SilverTree Equity with more than 35 years of experience in the enterprise software & services industry.

 

Kirill served as President and CEO of Citrix Systems, where he introduced a new strategy and corporate culture focusing on innovation and transformation to the Cloud. Before joining Citrix, Kirill served as President of Microsoft Business Solutions where he had end-to-end responsibility for the Microsoft Dynamics business. He also served as CTO of BMC Software and was a Co-Founder of Patrol Software.

 

Kirill is currently the Executive Vice Chairman at Acronis and serves as Chairman of ITRS Group and Spitch. He also serves on the board of Logically and was previously a Board Member of Avaloq.

 

Kirill holds an MSc in Systems Engineering from Moscow University of Transport Engineering and an MBA from Houston Baptist University.

 

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Rob Ludwig is an Advisory Board member for SilverTree Equity. Rob has been a commercial lawyer acting on capital market transactions and M&A for over 11 years. Rob is currently the Chief Operating Officer at Hoxton Ventures, a European VC fund focusing on seed and series A investments in Europe.

 

Prior to joining Hoxton, he spent two years at Deutsche Bank providing transactional legal support for the M&A, Corporate Broking and Equity Capital Markets teams as well as providing legal advice to the Equity Research and Sales & Trading Divisions. Rob began his legal career as a U.S. Associate at Linklaters, where he worked for 9 years. At Linklaters, Rob acted for sovereigns, corporate issuers, financial institutions and sponsors on public and private capital raises and restructurings across a wide range of financial instruments.

 

Rob is a U.S and U.K. national. He received his B.A. magna cum laude from Washington and Lee University and holds a J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law as well as an M.B.A from the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia. In his spare time, Rob is an avid poker player.

 

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Andrew Tymms is an Advisory Board Member at SilverTree Equity with more than 25 years of commercial due diligence and private equity advisory experience primarily in the software and technology sectors.

 

Andrew is currently a partner at Bain & Company where he leads Bain’s Private Equity practice across Asia-Pacific. He previously spent over two decades at Bain in the UK and Europe, where he led Bain’s Private Equity practice in the UK. Andrew has led more than 300 commercial due diligence projects and more than 30 portfolio company value creation plans on behalf of private equity clients. Andrew specializes in the technology sector and has deep expertise across vertical and horizontal software.

 

Andrew is an honors graduate of the University of Melbourne in electrical and electronic engineering.

 

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Russ Albright is an Advisory Board Member at SilverTree Equity with over 25 years of experience in software engineering leadership and technology due diligence on behalf of private equity clients.

 

Russ is the founder and CEO of Crosslake Technologies, a global consulting firm that specializes in advising private equity clients within the software sector on technology and R&D due diligence.

 

Prior to founding Crosslake, Russ was an executive at Microsoft where he was a member of the Engineering Excellence team. Russ helped redesign Windows’ end-to-end engineering practices and project management systems, resulting in better alignment of product and engineering feature plans and a re-allocation of Windows headcount.

 

Russ is based in Seattle and holds a BA in Finance & Mathematics from Western Washington University.

 

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Lou Franco is an Operating Partner at SilverTree Equity with 30 years of experience in software engineering leadership and product development across large and small enterprises.

 

Lou has significant experience supporting CTOs and R&D teams of private equity backed businesses in driving innovation and best practices. Lou was a Principal Developer at Trello (sold to Atlassian in 2017) and a Principal Software Engineer at Atlassian, a global firm specializing in software development and collaboration tools for teams.

 

Prior to Atlassian, Lou was a VP of Atalasoft Product Development, where he led the development and product management of Atalasoft’s product line for Kofax.

 

Lou holds a BSE from the Cooper Union for the advancement of Science and Art.

 

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Adam Hale is an Operating Partner at SilverTree Equity with a focus on technology and people. Adam has deep expertise in talent acquisition and driving accelerated growth and operational excellence in SaaS companies.

 

Adam was previously the CEO of SaaS HR tech scale-up, Fairsail (acquired by Sage) and the Global Head of Software at Russell Reynolds where he was responsible for 600+ executive search and assessment projects for leading technology and investment firms.

 

Adam is Chairman of Orbus Software. He is also Chairman of Clue, Arctic Shores, and the ScaleUp Institute. He was previously a board member of Unit4 (acquired by TA Associates)

 

Adam is a British national and holds a BSc in Computer Science from the University of Bristol.

 

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Jeroen is an Operating Partner at SilverTree Equity with over 25 years of legal experience across various industries, with a particular focus on technology and software.

 

Jeroen served as General Counsel at Unit4, an Advent International backed ERP software vendor, where he oversaw legal affairs, investor relations and restructuring. Prior to Unit4, Jeroen served as Global Legal Affairs Director & Investor Relations at Exact Software, a Netherlands-headquartered ERP software vendor focused on SMEs.

 

Jeroen is currently a Partner at Indus, an M&A boutique specializing in the lower mid-market technology segment and serves on the boards of Vindsubsidies and SalesManago.

 

Jeroen holds an LLM in Business Law from the University of Leiden.

 

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