Who we are
Built and run by exited founders.
Our partners have raised, scaled, and sold their own companies. Jason Kirby has four exits, including LiquidSky, acquired by Walmart. We've sat in your seat.
For management teams
Choose the right capital path. Then get it done.
Thunder helps founder-led companies decide whether to raise debt, raise equity, recapitalize, sell, acquire, or keep building. Once the path is clear, we prepare and run the process through closing.
Thunder by The Numbers
$1.2B+
Raised by founders after joining Thunder
$200M+
Transaction volume executed
80+
Companies served across 20+ sectors
6,000+
Post-exit founders in our network
2K+
Warm investor connections
The Thunder difference
Exited Founders Who Know What It’s Like to Be in Your Situation
Thunder’s partners advise our clients from their firsthand operating and transaction experience after exiting their own companies. They’re supported by our banking, analytical, legal, and capital-markets team that supports the process behind them.
Whose side we are on
We're on your side of the table.
We'll tell you the truth, even when it's "don't raise yet" or "your valuation is wrong." We reset bad strategy before it costs you a year. We only win when you win.
Execution
We get deals done others can't, and faster.
DigiPeak got a $7.5M credit line after losing $25M of revenue. Lucky Robots closed a $3.5M pre-seed in about 30 days.
Infrastructure
Institutional process, through a regulated channel.
Institutional-grade process and access, with securities offered through Finalis Securities LLC (member FINRA/SIPC), across a network of 2K+ warm investor connections.
The long game
Relationships that compound.
We're a multi-round partner, not a one-deal vendor. With TIE we secured the pre-seed, supported the seed, and introduced the investor who led the $10M Series A. $12.5M in total.
Track record
What getting it done actually looks like.
From $3.5M pre-seed rounds to $100M venture funds to $30M acquisitions and $7.5M credit lines, we design and execute capital strategies across stages.
Techstars
Raising a $100M flagship fund, Techstars needed LPs beyond the usual institutional base. We targeted post-exit founders and family offices new to the strategy and brought 35 new investors into the process.
35 new investors. Supported the $100M close.
Magic Molecule
A $7M consumer brand wanted to acquire its own $30M manufacturer for margin and supply-chain control. We structured the transaction and introduced the capital partners to fund it.
$30M acquisition closed. Business has grown 3× year over year.
Tie, formerly Revenue Roll
Formerly Revenue Roll
An early-stage SaaS business needed its first institutional investor. We secured the pre-seed in 2021, supported the seed in 2023, and introduced the investor who went on to lead the Series A.
$12.5M raised across three rounds, including a $10M Series A.
DigiPeak
A $60M adtech business with $10M EBITDA lost a major client and $25M of revenue with it. No lender would engage. We cleaned up the financials, repositioned the business, and introduced aligned lenders.
$7.5M line of credit secured.
EBY
A $10M women's apparel brand was trying to raise $10M at a $50M valuation into the 2023 market. We reset expectations, found the real need ($2M equity plus $2M debt) and went after that instead.
Closed in ~45 days. Revenue grew $10M → $45M over 2.5 years.
Lucky Robots
An experienced post-exit founder who didn't want to run the raise himself. We packaged the narrative and introduced aligned investors.
$3.5M pre-seed closed in about 30 days.
Emperia
Emperia's lead investor wanted out, but the founder's preference stack meant a sale would pay her nothing. We found the real issue was the business model, not the cap table, and helped her turn Emperia into an AI powered roll up instead.
Board approved the roll up over a sale.
Monument
A digital alcohol-recovery platform that had to tell a clinical story to investors who think in consumer metrics. We rebuilt the narrative around what the business actually was and ran the process to match.
$23.6M raised.
Haystack
A genuine fork in the road: raise, sell, or stay profitable. We modelled all three and told them the answer was none of the above yet, and that bootstrapping toward a larger exit was worth more than any deal available that year.
Advised not to transact. Positioned for a larger exit later.
GACW
Years of crowdfunding had produced real engineering and no institutional story. We translated the technology into an investment case that serious investors could underwrite.
$12M raised.
Myndbend
Traditional venture metrics undervalued the business. We took it to strategic acquirers who could see what it was worth to them rather than what it scored on a growth multiple.
4 competitive term sheets in 6 months.
Mediportal
Needed clarity on the optimal funding path in a sector where the wrong investor sets you back a year. We mapped who was actually active in health tech at their stage.
$10M raised.
Frontiers Market
We structured the pre-seed so it would stand up to Tier 1 diligence at the seed round instead of getting in the way of it, which is the most common own-goal we see.
$2M+ closed and positioned for a $10M seed.
Federate
Receivables cycles that lenders did not understand were capping how quickly the business could onboard new clients. We found the lender who did understand them.
A debt structure that funds onboarding.
In their words
Founders who've been through it.
"Thunder was my secret weapon while fundraising. They supported me with key analysis to help close my debt financing. They gave great guidance on fundraising. The team goes above and beyond and delivers on what they say they are going to do."
"My investors brought in Thunder to sell us to get their money back. But when I met with Jason & Oliver, they saw the real potential in my business was still to come and suggested a Growth Buyout Strategy. Their insights and guidance in communicating this to my board to keep me as CEO and continue growing were invaluable."
"Thunder transformed our fundraising journey. In less than 45 days, they helped us close 3 investors for $1.5M."
"From the very beginning, Jason was incredibly helpful. Throughout the process, Jason made everything run smoothly and professionally. His expertise and personalized approach exceeded our expectations."
RD
"Thunder has been like fairy dust for me. It has been great putting together a pitch deck and seeing investors respond to it so positively. Dealing with Thunder has made me so much more optimistic about my business."
"We would be nowhere without Thunder! Thunder has helped introduce us to investors and survive & thrive in what has been a very tough investor market these past 5 years."
"Working with Oliver has given us clarity on our strategic options at a critical point of whether we raise or sell or stay profitable. Thunder's advisory has been instrumental in our decision-making process to continue to bootstrap in preparation for a larger exit in the coming year."
"I'm incredibly grateful for Jason. I knew I needed growth capital, but I had no idea how to get it. Jason made it so easy. I plan to use Thunder for all our capital needs in the future."
TC
"Thunder's recommended capital strategy provided exactly the clarity we needed to drive our business forward. Their understanding of the healthcare technology landscape and ability to identify our optimal funding path has been crucial."
"Coming out of our raise I am more indebted to Jason & his team for all of their advice, guidance, and leadership than anyone else. That's a big achievement given our scale."
PX
"Thunder's responsiveness & willingness to help allowed us to close our pre-seed and seed stage investments quickly. We're thrilled to have Jason as a part of the team and strongly recommend founders to work with him!"
"Thunder's financial modeling and strategic guidance were game-changing for us. They structured our pre-seed round effectively to help us close $2M and prepare us for our $10M seed round for Tier 1 investors."
"Finding the right debt structure for our unique business model was challenging until we worked with Thunder. They immediately grasped how our AR cycles work and crafted a financing solution that actually accelerates our growth."
"After years of bootstrapping through crowdfunding, we needed partners who could tell our story to serious investors. Thunder took our engineering innovation and made it compelling to investors."
"We've been profitable for 7 years without external capital, so choosing the right growth partner was critical. Thunder helped us articulate why now is the perfect time to scale and connected us with investors who truly understand our vision."
"Thunder helped us find strategic acquirers who recognized our business potential beyond traditional VC metrics. In 6 months we received 4 competitive term sheets."
"Thunder's platform connected us with dozens of investors specifically interested in consumer health products. This targeted matching created competitive interest that strengthened our position and helped us secure $30m in capital."
"Thunder's strategic guidance helped us optimize our capital strategy and identify the right investors for our healthy meal delivery platform. Their understanding of the foodtech space has been crucial to securing our $3M Series A."
"As an AI startup in the midst of the AI boom, Thunder's platform filtered out the noise and connected us with partners who recognized our unique position in the market."
The engagement
Decide, prepare, execute.
Decide
- Capital Blueprint
- Strategic and financial analysis
- Debt, equity, recapitalization, M&A, acquisition, or hold recommendation
- Stakeholder alignment
- Valuation and ownership analysis
Prepare
- Financial normalization
- Positioning and transaction narrative
- Materials and data-room preparation
- Capital structure design
- Diligence readiness
- Counterparty strategy
Execute
- Investor, lender, or acquirer mapping
- Targeted outreach
- Process management
- Negotiation
- Diligence coordination
- Documentation and closing support
80+
80+ companies supported by Thunder Partners. Across technology and consumer, in the US and the UK, from pre-seed financings to acquisitions and sell-side processes.
Do you fit the Thunder profile?
When Thunder is most useful.
Strongest Fit
- Based in the US or UK
- Tech or consumer business (B2B or B2C)
- Meaningful revenue ~$5M/yr
- Previously raised capital
- A debt, equity, or M&A transaction in the next 12–24 months
- A management team willing to prepare for institutional diligence
- A board or ownership group that can align around a process
Less Likely a Fit
- A generic request for an investor list
- A company unwilling to provide financial information
- A process based primarily on an unsupported valuation expectation
- A company seeking introductions without preparation
- A situation where management and the board cannot engage constructively
Confidential. No obligation.
How we work
We don't start with a transaction. We start with the outcome.
Starting point
Your company
Where you are today
Every path modelled
Stay independent
Build value before you transact
Raise capital
Debt, equity, or both
Sell or merge
Strategic sale or merger
The objective
Your ideal target outcome
Defined before we start
All three are real answers. We have talked founders out of raising, and out of selling, when the numbers said the outcome they wanted was on another path.
The bench
You are not just hiring the partners you meet.
Thunder is connected to a community of thousands of founders who have already been through an exit. On any given deal we pull in the few who have done the specific thing you are about to do: sold to that acquirer, raised from that fund, survived that kind of diligence, cleaned up that kind of cap table.
6,000+post-exit founders in the Thunder network, across every sector and stage we work in.
100+of them called on directly, deal by deal, to support the founders we represent.
The team
People who’ve done it themselves.
Six partners with four exits, £100M+ deployed, $200M+ in transaction value and two decades of M&A and capital-markets experience between them, backed by a banking, analytical, and legal bench.
Jason KirbyManaging Partner 
St John CoughlanPartner 
Dipak PatelPartner 
Gaurav ChawlaPartner
Podcast
$100M Exits
Jason Kirby interviews founders who've been through nine-figure outcomes: what they'd do again, and what they'd never do twice. Worth a listen before you talk to any banker.
- 100+Founders and investors interviewed
- $10B+Combined guest exit value
- 12,000+Subscribers and growing
Questions
Before you apply.
US or UK tech and consumer businesses with a debt, equity, or M&A transaction ahead of them in the next 12–24 months. We're the strongest fit for companies past $5M in revenue that have raised institutional capital before, but revenue alone isn't a gate. The transaction has to be real.
Our compensation is meaningfully tied to completing a transaction, so our incentives sit with yours rather than with running a long process. We'll be explicit about fee structure before you commit to anything.
Securities are offered through Finalis Securities LLC, a member of FINRA/SIPC. Thunder and Finalis Securities LLC are separate, unaffiliated entities. That relationship is what lets us run institutional-grade transaction processes rather than making introductions and hoping.
That's the most useful conversation we have. Our Capital Blueprint maps what's actually available to you, who's likely to provide it, and what each path costs in dilution, control, and time. Sometimes the answer is to do nothing yet. With EBY it was to raise a quarter of what they'd planned, and that's why it closed.
It depends on what you're doing and how ready the business is. Lucky Robots closed a pre-seed in about 30 days; EBY closed equity and debt in about 45. An M&A process is usually measured in months, not weeks. We'll give you a realistic range up front rather than an optimistic one.
A Thunder partner reviews it and replies within two business days, including if we don't think we're the right fit, and why. Nothing is shared with anyone outside the firm.
Start with the outcome
Not every company needs a transaction. Every company needs a plan.
Tell us what you're trying to do. If we're not the right people, we'll say so.
Confidential. No obligation. A partner replies within two business days.