The founder of a local IT company buys the company from private equity investors

Six years ago, Mike Thomas decided to sell a majority stake in his company Achieve One to Canadian private equity firm Ardenton Capital.

The deal, which closed in 2018, was expected to give his Innsbrook-based IT company major financial backing to pursue acquisitions and achieve its long-term goal of $250 million in annual revenue.

However, for various reasons, including the outbreak of the pandemic in 2020, this acquisition strategy never caught on.

“Everything was going very smoothly for a while, we had a few targets to capture, and then this little thing called the global pandemic happened,” Thomas said.

The pandemic has hampered deals and temporarily placed a financial strain on Ardenton. Ardenton then appointed a new management team in 2022, which Thomas said had a different view on how it should manage its portfolio companies, including Achieve One.

“They weren’t able to make the acquisitions we wanted to make,” Thomas said.

That’s when Thomas saw an opportunity to regain control of the company he founded in 2010.

Earlier this year, after about 12 months of negotiations, he and a group of Achieve One executives purchased the company from Ardenton.

Although specific terms of the transaction were not disclosed, the management group currently owns 100 percent of Achieve One. Thomas owns a majority stake, with managers Shane Pierce and Chuck Pollard also owning percentages.

Thanks to this transaction, Thomas returned to work full time. Four years ago, he stepped back and took a less hands-on consulting position when Ardenton owned the company.

Thomas, now back as managing director, is poised to restart Achieve One’s growth plans, just on a smaller scale than he expected while under private equity control.

“Now that we have it back, our goal is to continue growing organically,” he said. “We just brought in a team from Northern Virginia and are re-entering the Carolinas while pursuing several acquisitions.”

Achieve One’s business, located at 4470 Cox Road, primarily involves helping commercial customers move data systems back and forth from the cloud. Thomas said many of her clients are in the financial and health care sectors.

The company has 26 employees and generates approximately $40 million in revenue annually.

In addition to its home state, Thomas said the company is looking to expand in North Carolina, particularly Raleigh and Charlotte, as well as the Dallas, Texas, area.

He said he doesn’t expect the company to complete any acquisitions this year, but in the future it will focus on companies slightly smaller than Achieve One.

Thomas, a Mechanicsville native and Radford University graduate making a fresh start at the company he founded nearly 15 years ago, said the experience has recently reminded him of his early years at times.

“Emotionally, yes, but now that it has matured, the knobs need to be turned in the right direction,” he said.