A Dallas private equity firm that started out working from a table at a La Madeleine on Northwest Highway has closed its first fund at $440 million in total committed capital, blowing past its original $350 million target by $90 million. Broadwing Capital Management, founded by Eliot Kerlin and Andrew Boisseau in 2022, finished the raise oversubscribed even as the broader private equity fundraising market has been mired in a multi-year slump.
As reported by The Dallas Morning News, Broadwing launched Fund I in 2023 with just four or five team members. Kerlin and Boisseau both spent years as partners at Insight Equity, the Southlake-based private equity firm, before striking out on their own to launch Broadwing, according to Private Equity Career News. That institutional pedigree appears to have helped the pair win over investors in a market where trust in first-time managers is hard to come by.
A Tough Market to Raise a Debut Fund
U.S. private equity fundraising declined for three consecutive years before 2025, and last year it hit a decade low, according to KPMG figures cited in the Dallas Morning News report. The number of active private equity funds fell from more than 1,000 at the start of 2023 to around 300 by the end of 2025, per the same KPMG data. Globally, the picture was similarly grim: S&P Global and With Intelligence reported that worldwide private equity fundraising fell 11% in 2025 to $490.8 billion, marking a second consecutive annual decline, while total buyout fund launches dropped from 392 in 2024 to 364 in 2025.
Kerlin told the Dallas Morning News that limited partners have had less cash available to commit to new funds because their money is tied up in existing funds with longer holding periods. Broadwing has tried to counter that dynamic directly, focusing on shortening its own portfolio-company holding periods rather than following the industry's longer-hold norms.
Investing Before the Fund Even Closed
Rather than wait for a final close to put money to work, Broadwing began investing while it was still raising Fund I, a strategy Kerlin said was meant to prove the firm's approach to prospective investors. By the time the fund officially closed, Broadwing was more than halfway through its planned investments, according to Kerlin, and the firm expects to end up with roughly 11 companies in the fund, though only six investments were in place at final close.
Those early deals gave Broadwing a working demonstration of its buy-and-build model. The firm's first platform investment was emergency vehicle upfitter LEHR, based in Dallas, which the firm acquired in 2024. LEHR outfits police and fire vehicles with lighting and equipment, and Broadwing expanded the company through 10 add-on acquisitions, growing it into a national network of 30 locations with roughly 300 technicians by July, according to a release carried by PR Newswire.
Betting on the Older Economy
Kerlin has described Broadwing's investment focus as the older economy — small, established family- and founder-owned businesses in manufacturing, distribution and services that generate up to $25 million in EBITDA and often have never had institutional ownership before, per the firm's own stated strategy. Beyond LEHR, the firm's portfolio moves have included a December 2025 acquisition of IT managed services company CloudScale365, which later merged with Valeo Networks and PCS International in July to form Forte Technologies, a combined operation serving more than 3,300 customers nationwide, according to a PR Newswire announcement.
In March 2024, Broadwing partnered with global investment manager Davidson Kempner on a growth investment in Upchurch Companies, a 54-year-old, family-owned mechanical, electrical and plumbing service provider based in Mississippi, as reported by law firm Greenberg Traurig. The firm also made a growth investment in West Palm Beach-based Campany Roof Maintenance in December 2023, later folding it into Reroof Partners as it added commercial roofing providers across the Southeast through late 2024, according to Business Wire.
Operational Playbooks and a Move Out of the Cafe
Andrew Boisseau said Broadwing purpose-built its model around operational partnership rather than passive ownership, and the firm backs that up with an in-house operations team and a resource group meant to equip management teams at its portfolio companies. Broadwing has said it invests in training and education for portfolio-company employees and works to improve their day-to-day experience along with the communities those businesses operate in, while also providing portfolio companies with outside consulting and other resources.
The firm formalizes that hands-on approach through two proprietary frameworks: the Broadwing Flight Path, used for sourcing and executing deals, and a 100-day Broadwing Capital Playbook designed to standardize metrics, financial reporting and operating processes across its portfolio companies, according to the firm's own materials. Broadwing has since moved well beyond its cafe-table origins — SEC Form D filings show the firm now lists its formal headquarters at 5956 Sherry Lane in North Dallas's Preston Center financial district, a shift from the informal La Madeleine setup where it began.
Broadwing's success also fits into a broader pattern of strong debut-fund performances among North Texas buyout shops despite the national headwinds. Dallas-based Citation Capital closed a $1.2 billion inaugural fund in July, according to the Wall Street Journal, underscoring that the region has become fertile ground for spinout private equity teams even as fundraising totals shrink elsewhere.
