About Us
Because Bridgestone is a closely held office, we take a longer term, often conservative approach to our investment activities. We view our portfolio companies and operating partners as important contributors to our business family.
We work locally and value early relationship building and embrace a simple fact – you won’t sell to us if you don’t like us, and we won’t buy from you if we do not like you. This may seem simplistic, but this personal approach to investment in the middle market is often overlooked. That said, we heavily weigh company/founder cultural fit before further assessing an opportunity.
As active investors, we interact with our family of companies often. While we generally are not involved in day-to-day operations, we do support our CEO’s as needed. Unlike a larger, more institutional buyer, we are focused on long term ownership and value creation – not short term gains.
Joel Konicek
Partner
Joel founded his first company in the mid 80’s, called Northern Computers. He built Northern Computers to $140MM in revenue at which time it was sold to Honeywell. Post transition, Joel founded Bridgestone Capital with his partner, Jim Peroutka. They have been buying and growing businesses together since.
Ryan Konicek
Operating Partner
Ryan has a background in corporate innovation, serving two years on a fortune 500 innovation team at Assurant Health. After Assurant Health, Ryan worked on Corporate M&A for a local manufacturing company in Wisconsin and San Diego. Ryan’s hands on experience and understanding of corporate M&A allows him to have a strong understanding of what it takes to both start and run a business. Contact Ryan at Ryan@bridgestonellc.com
Portfolio
