Berkman Woods is headquartered in the DFW metro with a specific focus on Collin County and the North Texas corridor. Frisco, McKinney, Allen, Prosper, Plano, and the surrounding communities represent one of the most active lower middle market M&A environments in the country. Sustained population growth, rapid commercial expansion, and a dense concentration of founder-owned businesses in essential service sectors have made this one of the best markets in the country for the kind of acquisitions Berkman Woods pursues.
Most institutional private equity firms focus on companies with $10M+ in EBITDA, businesses far too large for the typical Collin County founder. Independent sponsor firms like Berkman Woods are built for the segment below that threshold: businesses doing $1M to $5M in EBITDA, often owner-operated for decades, with real enterprise value that a traditional PE fund will never pursue. The DFW metro, and Collin County in particular, produces a steady, reliable volume of exactly these businesses.
Berkman Woods operates two distinct practices in the North Texas market. The first is LMM Private Equity, acquiring businesses in the $2M to $10M enterprise value range using SBA 7(a) financing, private credit, and mezzanine debt. This practice is designed for owners who are ready to transition out of their business entirely, whether on a short timeline or a structured one. The second is Strategic Management, taking operational control of businesses whose owners want to step back from day-to-day responsibilities without selling equity. Both practices operate in the same core deal range and the same sectors. The primary difference is the structure of the transaction and the degree to which the owner continues to hold an equity stake.
Berkman Woods targets four sectors across the DFW market, each chosen for its structural characteristics in the lower middle market: recurring revenue, essential services, and a high concentration of independently-owned businesses that institutional capital systematically overlooks.
In specialty contracting, Collin County's residential and commercial development pipeline creates sustained demand for HVAC, roofing, electrical, and plumbing contractors. The region's growth trajectory, one of the fastest in the country, has made this sector one of Berkman Woods' most active in the DFW market. These are businesses with real competitive moats in a geography that is not slowing down.
In healthcare, DFW's population growth and aging demographics drive consistent demand for home health, pharmacy, and ancillary healthcare services. The corridor from Frisco south to Plano has a particularly dense concentration of independently-owned healthcare businesses, many of them built over the past fifteen to twenty years by clinicians or entrepreneurs who are now approaching a natural transition point.
In professional services, the density of small and mid-sized businesses across the North Texas suburbs creates strong, recurring demand for CPA firms, IT services, engineering practices, and management consultants. These businesses tend to be sticky, profitable, and underrepresented in traditional PE deal flow. Their client relationships are long-standing, their revenue is largely predictable, and their owners often have no clear succession path, which is precisely the opening that Berkman Woods is designed to fill.
In niche manufacturing, the reshoring trend and the industrial base east and south of DFW have produced a growing segment of specialized manufacturers. These are businesses making components, assemblies, or industrial products for specific end markets, the kind of niche that institutional PE overlooks and Berkman Woods is built to evaluate. The complexity that makes these businesses hard to underwrite at scale is often the same complexity that creates durable competitive advantages at the lower middle market level.
The capital structure Berkman Woods uses in a given transaction depends on the business, the deal size, and the financing profile of the target. For eligible businesses, we use SBA acquisition financing, specifically the SBA 7(a) program, which allows significant leverage on acquisitions in the $1M to $5M EBITDA range and makes it possible to close deals efficiently without requiring a large equity check. For larger transactions, or for businesses that do not qualify under SBA guidelines, we use private credit facilities sourced through our lender relationships. Where there is a gap between available senior debt and the required equity contribution, we layer in mezzanine debt, subordinated capital that carries a higher cost but allows us to close transactions that would otherwise require more equity than the deal economics can support. The result is a flexible capital stack that can accommodate a wide range of deal sizes, business profiles, and seller structures without forcing every transaction into a single financing template.
Berkman Woods works directly with business owners in the North Texas market who are exploring their options after 10 to 30 years of building something significant. For Business Owners ready to begin a formal sale process, we move quickly, engage confidentially, and bring a capital structure to the table from day one. We are not a broker. We are the buyer, and we treat the process accordingly.
We also work with owners who are not yet ready to sell, or who do not want to sell, but need to step back. If you have built a business in Collin County or the surrounding area and find that the day-to-day demands of running it are no longer where you want to spend your time, Strategic Management offers a path to retain your ownership and upside while Berkman Woods takes operational responsibility for the business. This is not a management consulting engagement. We take real control and real accountability.
Finally, Berkman Woods works with family offices, institutional investors, and individual co-investors who want direct exposure to lower middle market deal flow in the Texas market. As an independent sponsor, we bring transactions to our capital partners on a deal-by-deal basis rather than deploying from a blind pool. If you are a family office or high-net-worth investor seeking concentrated positions in acquisitions of essential service businesses across the DFW metro, Berkman Woods is an active source of that deal flow.
Contact Berkman Woods for a confidential conversation about your business or your capital deployment goals in the Dallas-Fort Worth market. Whether you are a business owner in Collin County, a family office seeking deal flow, or a management team considering a buyout, Berkman Woods is an active partner in this market.