Ex-Quadrant executive launches consumer-tech PE firm

Glow Capital Partners is a joint effort with Kate Morris, founder of Adore Beauty, an online beauty products retailer that received backing from Quadrant’s debut growth fund in 2019. Adore completed a domestic IPO in October 2020 and now has a market capitalization of A$445 million ($320 million).

Ryan joined Quadrant in 2011, having previously worked for garage door maker Alesco Corporation and Catalyst Investment Managers. He assumed responsibility for the firm’s growth strategy when it was introduced in 2019. E-commerce became a prevalent theme, and Ryan claims this offered insights into the speed of digitization and disruption of traditional business models.

“It is now possible for niche Australian businesses to go global – very few Australian businesses in the past had been able to do this. In the case of e-commerce – enablers such as Shopify and Afterpay are allowing more rapid scaling than ever before,” he said in a LinkedIn statement. “I find this emerging environment very exciting and reinvigorating and I am very passionate about the possibilities.”

Ryan believes this start-up ecosystem – characterized by the emergence of unicorns like Atlassian and Canva, which have achieved global scale – forms the bedrock of an emerging growth equity sector. It is creating opportunities to back proven business models with rapid growth potential, yet Australia’s investment community is not positioning itself to take advantage.

“Many of the existing growth investors are more akin to small buyout funds – using debt funding with a conservative and domestic approach to growth and more of a value rather than a growth mindset,” Ryan said. “The Americans have seen the gap in our market and AKA Brands has bought Princess Polly and Culture Kings and more recently General Atlantic swooped in on Mable.”

Having departed Quadrant earlier this year, Ryan has positioned Glow as an Australian manager to fill this gap. According to The Australia Financial Review, the firm wants to make 2-3 investments a year of A$20-50 million.

It will do so with a gender-balanced team, though not with a specific mandate to back female-run companies. Early recruits include Natalie Meyenn, formerly head of private equity at MLC, who will sit on the investment committee.

Morris believes that male-dominated decision-making is a problem in private equity. “Certainly my experience as a founder pitching to private equity was that it was just a room full of men and a lot of them didn’t want to do the work to understand my category. I was lucky that my experience with Justin was very different,” she told the Review.

Morris will continue to serve as chief innovation officer at Adore. She is already an active investor, having co-founded Findation, which helps customers with foundation color matching, and backed toilet paper start-up Who Gives A Crap and breast pump business Milkdrop. Morris also introduced smart phone mount supplier Quad Lock to Quadrant, and ended up investing as well.

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• Topics
• Australasia
• Fundraising
• Growth
• Technology
• Consumer
• Australia
• e-commerce
• TMT
• Quadrant Private Equity
• Glow Capital Partners