MRE Capital’s 2025 Year in Review
MRE Capital was formed as my family office with a focus on acquiring, building and scaling great businesses over a long period of time. I have to say I am proud of what we have accomplished since our formation and particularly proud of our progress in 2025. As I have always said, building a great company is hard and takes a long time, and as I think about our journey of building MRE, we are no different. We need to continue to focus on creating a talent factory here at MRE, where great talent can develop and thrive while supporting our platform companies as they scale. It will be a journey and one that so far, we have very much enjoyed.
We are as convinced as ever that there is a large market opportunity ahead for MRE. The private equity market overhang and dislocation highlight the days of “painting by numbers” through financial engineering and multiple arbitrage are over. Those with a true operating focus and playbook will emerge as the winners in the next leg of private investments going forward, and we believe we are well positioned.
In 2025, we added one new platform company to the portfolio and continued to build our team to set us up to build great companies. We are not focused on short-term positioning, multiple arbitrage or financial engineering; we are focused on building market-leading companies that focus on solving customer problems better than our competitors. That is our passion.
David Williams, Founder and CEO, MRE Capital
MRE Capital
2025: By the Numbers
We are proud of the companies and teams we get to work with every day to build great businesses.
Collectively in 2025, the MRE portfolio generated pro forma revenue and EBITDA of $679 million and $90 million, respectively. This represented organic growth of 17% and total growth of 24%.
We believe great companies grow 2-3x faster than the market and hold ourselves accountable to ambitious growth targets. If you aren’t growing, you’re dying!
In addition to organic growth, M&A continues to be a core growth lever. We completed six strategic add-on investments in 2025, with another six under LOI entering 2026.
Our companies now employ more than 5,000 dedicated people across their organizations.
Everything looks easy behind a spreadsheet, and we never take for granted the teams and frontline individuals that wake up every day to build something truly special.
Welcome, Total Fire Protection!
Total Fire Protection
In 2025, we had the opportunity to meet with the owners of Total Fire Protection (“TFP”) (Ryan Goossens and Jon Goossens) through an introduction from the CEO of DJ’s Landscaping (thanks, DJ!). We had developed a thesis in this space and had been in search of the right entry point over the last 18 months.
TFP is a full-service provider of design/engineering, installation, and inspection services for fire and life safety systems across MI, FL, CO, and MT. The Goossens will remain material owners going forward with a focus on meaningfully scaling the business over the next 10+ years.
The Goossens were searching for a partner with true operating experience and a flexible time horizon to build a great business over the long-term. Building on the strong growth culture at TFP, we believe the opportunity exists to build a true market leader focused on developing the best talent in the industry and doing great work for customers.
Our Current Portfolio
Team Additions
In 2025, the MRE team grew to 11 professionals, strengthening our ability to support our partners and portfolio companies.
Sean Creamer
Business Partner, Finance
Sean Creamer is an executive with extensive public and private company experience across several industries in CEO, COO and CFO (primary) roles. In addition, he has served on multiple public and private Boards of Directors in both for profit and non-profit sectors.
He served as CFO of Merkle Group, Inc., a global marketing services business, from 2015 through 2021. During 2015, he assisted David Williams with the sale of a majority stake in Merkle to the dentsu Group that ultimately led to 100% ownership by dentsu in 2020.
Dave Paulus
Business Partner, Sales
Dave Paulus is an executive leader, mentor, and strategic advisor with over 35 years of experience in scaling marketing and technology services organizations. His expertise lies in driving exponential growth through strategic execution and team building.
As a member of Merkle’s executive team, Dave was instrumental in the firm’s ascent, focusing on growth strategy, market execution, and forging strategic partnerships. He successfully led Merkle's Global Partnerships with industry giants including Adobe, Salesforce, Google, and AWS. When Dave retired in 2022, Merkle, a dentsu company, had grown to over $1 Billion in annual US revenues.
Libby Barden
Business Partner, Talent/People
Libby Barden is an executive leader who brings more than three decades of leadership in HR and talent management. She previously served as Global Chief People Officer at Merkle Inc. and led the Americas Human Capital function for dentsu across all service lines. In both roles, she was responsible for scaling the practice and increasing the People/talent function professionalism and productivity.
Prior to Merkle, Libby spent nearly 30 years at Accenture in both client facing and senior HR leadership roles including North American HR Lead, Global Management Consulting HR Lead, Global Human Capital Strategy Lead, North America Delivery Center Director, and Canada Country HR Lead.
Horatiu Calin
Senior Associate
Horatiu joined MRE Partners in 2025 and is a Senior Associate on the Direct Investing team. Horatiu is responsible for origination, execution, and portfolio management activities.
Prior to joining MRE, Horatiu was an Associate on the direct and co-investment team at Jasper Ridge Partners, where he focused on evaluating and executing private equity investment opportunities.
Growth Playbook
Our Growth Playbook continued to guide how we partner with management teams—balancing strategic clarity with operational rigor to drive sustainable, long-term value.
Portfolio company leadership teams attend the 2025 Executive Summit, September 2025
In 2025, we hosted our second annual Executive Summit, bringing together more than 50 leaders across our platform companies to share insights, align on priorities, and build stronger connections across the MRE ecosystem.
We welcomed CEOs and senior leaders from across our portfolio to explore how the MRE Growth Playbook can help accelerate company growth, strengthen cross-portfolio connections, and create space to learn from one another.
A highlight of this year’s program was an interactive session with Bill Carr, former Amazon executive and co-author of Working Backwards: Insights, Stories, and Secrets from Inside Amazon, who shared lessons on scaling innovation and execution that leaders could apply directly to their own companies. We think Amazon is a world class example of a company who understand the importance of building a principle driven culture and a management system to operationalize those principles that drive customer obsession, innovation, operational efficiency and growth. Having the opportunity to talk with Bill, who had a front row seat to the development of these systems at Amazon, was invaluable to the MRE community.
Throughout the summit, participants openly shared what’s working — and what’s not — where they’re stuck, and how to move forward in scaling mid-market companies. We discussed best practices, challenged assumptions, and left with clear, actionable ideas to take back to their teams as they are building their management and operating systems. Just as important, we built relationships with each other and made time for some fun and camaraderie.
The 2025 MRE Executive Summit underscored MRE’s core belief that great companies are built by great leaders — and great leaders thrive in strong communities. By combining patient capital, hands-on operating expertise, and a culture-first mindset, MRE continues to help its portfolio companies scale with confidence.
We also introduced our new Business Partner roles at this year’s summit. We launched business partners in three critical areas of the business: Chief Financial Officer, Chief Revenue Officer, and Chief Human Resource Officer. These roles are critical to MRE establishing best practices and a clear development path for these critical roles. Our business partners are all extremely experienced practitioners and effective collaborative coaches. We are excited to see these new roles come to life in 2026. Learn more about our Business Partners here.
Thank you to all the leaders who joined us — your openness, collaboration, and commitment to growth made this summit a success. We can’t wait to see the impact you’ll create in the year ahead!
Looking Ahead to 2026
As we enter 2026, we are building on the momentum of 2025 with a clear set of themes and priorities designed to drive continued performance across the platform.
2026 Key Focus Areas/Priorities
In 2026, we will remain focused on key priorities as we work alongside our partners to strengthen businesses and unlock long-term value:
Add one additional platform
Do great add-on M&A
Build and refine our management system
Institutionalize our Growth Playbook
Align on strategic initiatives
Build and develop world-class teams
As we look ahead to 2026, we remain disciplined in our approach and optimistic about the opportunities in front of us, with a clear focus on execution, performance, and partnership.
As always, we would welcome your feedback. I can be reached at dwilliams@mre-capital.com.
IMPORTANT NOTES & DISCLOSURES
This Year in Review and any supplemental materials included herewith are not an official statement. All investing involves risk of loss, including possible loss of all amounts invested. The material herein has been prepared by MRE and is intended for informational purposes only. There is no assurance that any trends described herein will continue or events will transpire as described herein. The information provided is for illustrative purposes only and reflects MRE Capital’s beliefs and perspective, which may be incorrect. MRE Capital makes no representation, and it should not be assumed, that past performance is an indication of future results. As such, actual results may vary materially, and no person should place undue reliance on such information.
Pro forma revenue and EBITDA of the MRE portfolio are provided for information and discussion purposes only. They are considered projections and hypothetical and are not necessarily a reliable predictor of future outcomes. Hypothetical performance results have many inherent limitations and there are frequently sharp differences between hypothetical performance results and the actual results subsequently realized by any particular platform company investment. There are numerous economic and non-economic factors which cannot be fully accounted for in the preparation of projected performance results, all of which can adversely affect actual performance.
This Year in Review does not purport to be complete or to contain all of the information an investor may desire. No representation or warranty, expressed or implied, is being made as to the accuracy or completeness of the information contained herein, and nothing in this letter is or shall be relied upon as a promise or representation or warranty whether as to the past or future results. This document is not intended to be, nor should it be construed or used as an offer to sell, or a solicitation of any offer to buy, interests in any MRE investment opportunity. The information contained herein does not take into account the particular investment objectives or financial circumstances of any specific person who may receive it. The information herein is not intended to provide, and should not be relied upon for accounting, legal or tax advice, or investment recommendations.
MRE Management, LLC, an affiliate of MRE Capital, is a SEC-registered investment adviser. Registration does not imply a certain level of skill or training.