July 11, 2023 – Prairie Capital, a Chicago-based middle-market private equity firm, is pleased to announce the successful sale of Right at School (“RAS” or the “Company”), a Prairie Capital VI portfolio company. This exit highlights Prairie’s investment strategy of partnering with founders and management teams to build market-leading companies in high-growth industries.
Prairie sold a majority stake in RAS to a larger private equity fund. Prairie and Management, most notably Founding CEO Mark Rothschild, will retain minority ownership stakes in the Company. Right at School is a market-leading provider of distinctive and enriching before and after school programs, along with school break camps, to school districts across the country.
Prairie’s investment thesis focused on expanding RAS from a founder-owned business to a scalable platform company in the highly fragmented and growing before and after school industry. This required substantial company-building investments including: (i) establishing a national go-to-market strategy through investments in sales and marketing; (ii) hiring key management to supplement the strong incumbent team; (iii) investing in technology to enhance site level management capabilities, customer service, financial reporting, and performance analytics; and (iv) building an HR function to identify, hire and retain educators throughout the country.
These investments, among others, enabled RAS’ annual revenues to increase more than 8x during Prairie’s hold period.
BMO Capital Markets served as RAS’ financial advisor and Reed Smith served as legal counsel.
For more information, please contact:
Steve King at sking@prairie-capital.com
Tony Danielak at tdanielak@prairie-capital.com