Economic Forces Shaping the Middle Market: Southwest Florida

Bruce Eatroff is a Managing Director at Star Mountain Capital and sits on the Firm’s Executive Committee and all the Funds Investment Committees. Star Mountain Capital is a specialized lower middle market asset management firm with over $5 billion of AUM across Private Credit, Private Equity and Secondaries strategies.

Bruce has over forty years of private equity, private credit, fund investing, investment banking and operational experience. In 2000, Mr. Eatroff founded Halyard Capital, a U.S. lower middle-market private equity fund manager and successfully raised three funds and more than $600 million of capital. In 2020, the Halyard team joined Star Mountain Capital.

Mr. Eatroff has a broad variety of investing experiences across technology-enabled services industries including Marketing/AdTech, IT, Healthcare and Business Services. He currently sits on the Board of twelve portfolio companies and has previously been a director of two dozen other businesses. He has been a featured speaker and panelist at over one hundred conferences and events.

Mr. Eatroff has his undergraduate degree from Lafayette College and an MBA from The Wharton School of Business. Bruce served as the Co-President of the Wharton Private Equity and Venture Capital Association for over five years.

Timothy Cartwright specializes in closely held businesses and alternative assets. Closely held and family businesses often represent a significant percentage of a family’s net worth. Tim leverages his extensive transactional experience to guide an intentional succession planning process required for the legacy and illiquid nature of this asset. Tim coaches and mentors our entrepreneurial families with his unique ability to distill complex, often time sensitive, issues into elemental components creating a simple and executable action plan. Across the expanse of alternative assets, Tim has deep experience in private equity, venture capital, and early and seed stage investing. He is the founder of the Tamiami Family of Angel Funds, the first ever member managed Angel Funds in Southwest Florida.

Tim started his career with Arthur Andersen rising quickly to Senior Consultant. Shortly thereafter, Tim recognized a void in the enterprise software market and founded Benchmark Solutions, Inc., a supply chain consulting company. Seven years later, he sold Benchmark Solutions and launched an internet trading exchange called By-Product Interactive, Inc.

On February 1, 2021, By-Products Interactive was acquired by Euromoney Institutional Investor PLC (LON:ERM). In 2006, Compass Advisory Group, an M&A Consultancy that Tim started in 2002, merged with Magnus Capital Management to co-found Fifth Avenue Family Office.