Annual roundup highlights the private equity, venture capital, and debt firms with the best track records of success backing entrepreneurs.

October 31, 2023 7:00 am ET

Denver, Colorado October 31, 2023 – Inc. today announced its fifth annual Founder-Friendly Investors list, honoring the private equity, venture capital, and debt firms with the best track records of success backing entrepreneurs.

The final list recognizes 218 firms that remain actively involved with the businesses they invest in, and that have earned the trust of the entrepreneurs they support to help drive growth.

“Now more than ever, founder-led companies need financing partners that offer guidance, expertise, and understanding—not just capital. These are the private equity, venture capital, and debt firms that have founders’ backs when it comes to accelerating growth,” says Scott Omelianuk, editor-in-chief of Inc. Business Media.

“We’re honored to be included in this prestigious list of forward-thinking sponsors,” says Travis Conway, Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Rallyday Partners. “At Rallyday, we set out to break the private equity mold by partnering operators with operators and by creating better stakeholder alignment. Rallyday’s ‘by founders, for founders’ approach to investing in founder-led businesses is at the core of our partnership model and our success as investors.”

In support of entrepreneurs, Rallyday built the Rallyday Accelerator Program (“RAP”) which captures the Rallyday founders’ collective business building experience to help entrepreneurs and their team achieve their full possibility as leaders, elevate their industry, and dramatically grow the value of their enterprise. The RAP is designed around the elements of the Founders’ Journey: Strategy, Operations, Purpose, Organization, Culture, and Leadership. The program lays a foundation of trust and scale-ready blueprints for the next phase of corporate and personal growth.

“Because of the Rallyday Accelerator Program, we were able to build trust at a much faster rate and that enabled us to do great things on a much faster time scale,” said Frank Corvino*, Founder and CEO of Genesis Research, a pioneer in tech-enabled real-world evidence and HEOR services for the pharmaceuticals industry.

Rallyday partnered with Frank Corvino and Genesis Research in a strategic investment made in February 2020 and successfully exited to GHO Capital in November 2021, just 21 months later. Frank Corvino aptly noted, “A company moves and performs at the speed of trust.” As Frank Corvino’s founder journey demonstrates, Rallyday’s accelerator program not only accelerated corporate growth, but it also catalyzed personal growth helping him achieve his full possibility as a leader.

To compile the list, Inc. went straight to the source: entrepreneurs who have sold to private equity and venture capital firms. Founders filled out a questionnaire about their experiences partnering with private equity, venture capital, and debt firms and shared data on how their portfolio companies have grown during these partnerships.

To see the complete list, go to: inc.com/founder-friendly-investors/2023

Introduced in 2019, the Founder-Friendly Investors list quickly established itself as one of Inc.’s most resourceful franchises. It has become a go-to guide for entrepreneurs who want to grow their companies while retaining an ownership stake.

The November 2023 issue of Inc. magazine is available online now at inc.com/magazine and will be on newsstands beginning October 31.

About Inc.

The world’s most trusted business-media brand, Inc. offers entrepreneurs the knowledge, tools, connections, and community they need to build great companies. Its award-winning multiplatform content reaches more than 50 million people each month across a variety of channels including websites, newsletters, social media, podcasts, and print. Its prestigious Inc. 5000 list, produced every year since 1982, analyzes company data to recognize the fastest-growing privately held businesses in the United States. The global recognition that comes with inclusion in the 5000 gives the founders of the best businesses an opportunity to engage with an exclusive community of their peers, and the credibility that helps them drive sales and recruit talent. The associated Inc. 5000 Conference is part of a highly acclaimed portfolio of bespoke events produced by Inc. For more information, visit inc.com.

About Rallyday Partners

Rallyday Partners is a Denver-based private equity firm that was built by successful entrepreneurs to provide a better way of serving and partnering with emerging companies and their leaders. Drawing upon its four sources of capital – creative, financial, experiential, and human capital – the firm’s ‘by founders for founders’ strategy provides an alternative to traditional private equity for those that want to go even further, elevate entire industries, and have an experience of a lifetime together. More information regarding Rallyday is available rallydaypartners.com.