Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has joined Georgia based JAM Capital Partners to raise a new $100 million fund to invest in fast growing and innovative businesses in the Southeast. JAM Capital Partners is a private investment partnership that makes majority and minority investments in lower middle market growth companies.
 
“Speaker Gingrich is one of the most innovative and creative thought leaders in modern American history and someone with the public sector experience that provides a unique perspective for entrepreneurs operating in increasingly regulated markets.”

John McCallum, Managing Partner of JAM Capital Partners, launched the firm in 2010 and believes that the Southeast provides unique advantages for investors seeking to invest in fast growing businesses. The lower middle market, typically businesses with annual revenue of $5 million to $25 million, is underserved by private investment capital.

“If the Wright Brothers invented the airplane in the current regulatory environment the plane would probably be grounded due to safety concerns. I have helped entrepreneurs navigate regulated markets for thirty years and I want to help modern day Wright Brothers get off the ground,” said Speaker Gingrich.

This will be the second fund for JAM Capital Partners and McCallum, who previously worked for Goldman Sachs after graduate school at Harvard. The first fund was $40mm and was invested in over a dozen growth companies in a diverse set of industries. The first fund has six complete exits and a number of partial exits since its inception.

The JAM Capital Partners investor base is comprised of entrepreneurial families in the region that seek to invest alongside other families and entrepreneurs that share their values and investment approach. “Our partners have no interest in the Wall Street idea of investing in a blind pool fund with no discretion, little transparency and limited control of their capital – they want to invest with like-minded people, they want transparency, and they want to have control of their investment decisions,” said McCallum.

JAM Capital Partners expects to begin making new investments immediately and plans to close the $100 million fund by the end of 2016.

JAM Capital Partners is a private investment partnership that makes majority and minority equity investments in middle market operating companies. JAM Capital Partners is the trusted investment partner to a select group of families, individuals and businesses in the Southeast. The firm provides its partners with transparency, discretion, and control of their liquidity and is a departure from the traditional Private Equity Group that focuses on blind pool investing, provides little investment discretion, and imposes a ten-year fund commitment on it’s partners.