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Mountaingate Capital Portfolio Company Tinuiti Announces Investment from New Mountain Capital

December 2020

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Denver, December 10, 2020 –Mountaingate Capital, a Denver-based private equity firm employing a proven, buy-and-build strategy that empowers lower middle market companies with strong growth potential and engaged leadership teams, is pleased to announce that it has sold its position in Tinuiti in connection with a new investment in the company completed by New Mountain Capital.

The exit of Tinuiti by Mountaingate represents another highly successful outcome for Mountaingate’s investors in a tech-enabled and analytics-driven marketing services platform. Mountaingate first partnered with Tinuiti’s predecessor entity Elite SEM, and its founder Ben Kirshner, in 2017, when the business employed approximately 150 individuals. In 2020, Tinuiti will conclude the year with over 700 employees and will have grown over 400% since the start of the partnership.

Mr. Kirshner commented, “I interviewed a long list of distinguished private equity investors in 2017 and considered the selection of an investment partner to be the most important decision in my company’s history. Mountaingate’s knowledge of our industry combined with its brand of founder-friendly but highly strategic and ambitious growth investing stood apart. In hindsight, I could not have chosen a better partner.”

Tinuiti’s CEO, Zach Morrison, added, “With the support of our Founder and Chairman Ben Kirshner, Mountaingate Capital, Vice Chairman Rick Backus, and our outside directors George Gallate and Gayle Meyers, we completed three critical acquisitions, advanced our Mobius product suite, and recruited a world class executive team that enabled us to become the largest performance marketing firm across Google, Facebook and Amazon. The future for Tinuiti, our employees, our clients, and our partners has never been brighter.”

“What we strive to accomplish at Mountaingate is not possible without highly-aligned founders and passionate management teams who relentlessly pursue the strategic vision that anchors our investment thesis”, added Colton King, Co-Founder and Managing Director of Mountaingate. “Ben Kirshner and Zach Morrison have written the book on how best to partner with private equity. I’m beyond grateful for their trust and partnership, and I’m thrilled to see what Tinuiti can accomplish now on another scale with the support of New Mountain Capital.”

Tinuiti and Mountaingate Capital were advised by CG Petsky Prunier, part of the Canaccord Genuity Group, and law firm Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP.

About Mountaingate Capital

Mountaingate Capital is a private equity firm based in Denver that specializes in building and empowering companies with strong growth potential and engaged leadership teams. Mountaingate’s focus on organic growth coupled with its proven customer-centric buy-and-build approach for add-on acquisitions and shared equity ownership with management creates more value for the end customer, while forging stronger, more collaborative, and more successful investment partnerships with management teams. Mountaingate targets investments in new platform companies typically with $5 million to $25 million of EBITDA. For more information on Mountaingate, please visit https://mountaingate.com.

About Tinuiti

Tinuiti is the largest independent performance marketing firm across Google, Facebook and Amazon, with over $2 billion in media under management and 700 employees. With expert knowledge in search, social, Amazon & marketplaces, mobile apps, CRM & email marketing and more, Tinuiti understands success requires both strategy and channel specialization. Each solution is delivered leveraging Tinuiti’s performance planning framework, GAMMA, and enabled by a proprietary suite of marketing intelligence and media activation technology – Mobius. Clients include Ancestry, Bombas, e.l.f. Cosmetics, Eddie Bauer, Etsy, Rite Aid, Seventh Generation, The Honest Company, Terminix, Truist (formerly known as BB&T), and Vitamin Shoppe. For more information visit http://www.tinuiti.com.