What is the Small Business Investor Alliance?

The U.S. middle market captures companies with annual revenues between $10 million and $1 billion. These are the thousands of small businesses that are powering the U.S. economy, creating jobs and sustaining communities. Middle market firms break into three subsets: lower ($5-$150 million/annual revenues); middle ($150-$500 million/annual revenues; and, upper ($500 million-$1 billion/annual revenues). This diverse segment reaches across all industries and encompasses publicly and privately held companies, family-owned businesses, partnerships, and sole proprietorships.

SBIA is dedicated to serving private equity firms focused on investing in the smaller end of the middle market and helping these firms grow on through the middle market. In simple terms, these private equity funds are investment vehicles that pool capital largely from institutional investors like pensions and endowments, and then invest in businesses that are not publicly traded to help them grow. These small private equity funds are a positive force for job creation, innovation, and expanding prosperity for people and places that often are not yet fully benefitting from our system of free enterprise. Lower middle market private equity helps businesses grow not only by providing critical, patient capital that conventional banks cannot, but also by helping smaller businesses learn how to flourish and make big leaps forward that they could not have achieved on their own.

At the state and local levels, in every industry and corner of the country, it is middle market companies and investors that are creating new jobs and driving economic growth in their regions and communities.