Investor Spotlight: Graham Garzon, Ground Force Capital — Growth Stage Investing, Business Fundamentals, and What It Takes to Build an Acquirable Brand
About this episode
Hannah Dittman interviews Graham Garzon about growth stage investing and building acquirable brands.
In this episode of the Startup CPG Podcast, host Hannah Dittman sits down with Graham Garzon, Vice President at Ground Force Capital — a consumer focused growth equity fund with deep roots in food and beverage. Graham brings a background in investment banking and private equity to a firm whose two founding partners are CPG entrepreneurs themselves, giving Ground Force a rare combination of financial rigor and operator empathy. He plays a key role in sourcing, evaluating, and diligencing new opportunities, as well as supporting portfolio companies as they scale toward an eventual exit. Ground Force invests at the growth stage, typically writing checks between $10 and $40 million in brands doing north of $15 to $20 million in revenue. They are minority investors by default, focused on being the last institutional capital before an exit, and they lean in as active board members and thought partners — not passive check writers. Their portfolio spans food and beverage, fast casual restaurants, and the consumer enablement technology that powers emerging brands. Hannah and Graham get into what growth stage investing actually looks like from the inside — what acquirers care about, why…
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