Third South Capital acquires and operates profitable niche software businesses. We're operators, not flippers. We also deploy AI for operators who want to build it in-house.
Who We Are
We're four partners who, separately, got obsessed with the same idea: owning and running a portfolio of small software businesses. The name comes from where three of us met: the top floor of Yates dorm, third section south.
- Harrison Roday — M&A and private equity. Years of middle-market deal execution and investment banking.
- Colin Burns — public markets and capital allocation. Long/short public equity investing across US software and technology at global hedge funds.
- Justin Duke — software engineering and SaaS. Engineer and engineering leader at scale; founded and runs a SaaS product used by thousands.
- Myles Marino — Early-stage operations; leads M&A and portfolio operations.
Services
We deploy AI for operators outside our portfolio, the same tools we built for our own businesses. It starts with a workshop: we map your operation, identify what's worth pursuing, and give you an honest read. If we move to implementation, the deliverable is a working tool your team owns. No retainer. No dependency on us.
Where We're at Our Best
- Founder wants out. Built something real, been running it for years, done. We move fast and don't waste time.
- Messy situation. Wrong capital structure, technical challenges, and more. We're comfortable with complexity; it's often where we add the most.
- Corporate divestiture. A parent company with software as a non-core asset that needs a buyer who will actually operate it, not flip it or let it decay.
Acquisition Criteria
We buy vertical and niche SaaS. 70%+ recurring revenue, teams under 10, 5+ years of operating history. We don't buy pre-revenue or growth-stage businesses, consumer software, single-customer concentration above 40%, platform-dependent software, or businesses that only work because the founder is still in it.
Current Portfolio
- Blue Canary Software, Zendesk applications used by thousands of agents
- Icon Horse, the easiest way for developers to retrieve icons for a given URL
- Clipboard History Pro, a browser plugin for managing your clipboard history
- EntryThingy, gallery and open-call management for arts organizations
- Shopping Cart Apps, a Shopify app for syncing e-commerce tools with advertisers
Get in Touch
Think you might be a fit? Tell us about your business. We respond quickly and won't waste your time.
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