Elizabeth Karter

At Brightstar Capital Partners, we believe success begins with strong relationships built on trust, alignment, and a shared vision to help great businesses grow. While capital is essential, we focus on building long-term partnerships built through hands-on experience and a commitment to lasting value. Our investment evaluation process is grounded in sectors we know deeply. We focus on cash-flowing businesses where we see an opportunity to optimize operations and foster ownership culture, helping to grow the company better than it could on its own. Ultimately, we judge success by a simple question. Five or 10 years after we exit, if someone calls a founder or partner we’ve worked with and asks, “Should I work with Brightstar?” I want the answer to be yes. That is our definition of real value creation.

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Starboard Built Big Stake in BILL Holdings, Plans to Nominate Directors "Activist investor Starboard Value owns an 8.5% stake in BILL Holdings and intends to run a boardroom challenge to push for changes at the financial automation software company that serves small and midsize businesses around the world, it said in a filing on Thursday. "BILL Holdings, which has a market value of nearly $5 billion and sees more than 1% of U.S. gross domestic product flow through its platform, saw its stock price lose nearly half of its value since January." #corporategovernance #boardsofdirectors #activistinvesting #shareholderactivism #governancearbitrage https://lnkd.in/gQhi_A5b

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I have talked a lot about consolidation in the VC space here, typically referring to the smaller number of active firms able to raise funds and smaller number of companies benefitting from those funds. The downstream consequence of THAT consolidation is that geographic consolidation is speeding up. California was always dominant, but in 2025 62% of all VC dollars landed in CA (in about 33% of all deals) according to Pitchbook. That's up from 54% or so last year. Phew... https://lnkd.in/gd9Q95Zq

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I spoke with Christien Louviere of BDE Capital about his journey from a $330mm exit to becoming an independent sponsor. Christien shared excellent insights for folks looking to partner with business owners, rather than buy sellers out completely. Below are a few of the topics we covered: - Why he moved from “zero-to-one” startups to a buy-then-build strategy - How Christien's background shaped a focus on growth vs. cost-cutting - Why 20–40% rolled equity is central to his deal structures—and how it builds trust with sellers - Using scenario analysis with AI tools to evaluate management teams and uncover hidden key-person risks - How to identify when a $3–5M EBITDA company truly has a middle management layer—or is still founder-reliant For anyone investing in or buying small businesses, Christien’s approach provides a fresh lens on growth, alignment, and deal structuring. 🎥 Watch the full interview here → https://lnkd.in/ekfkaiej 🎧 Listen on Spotify: https://lnkd.in/e86Agx6V

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Construction and demolition (C&D) waste in the U.S. is an over $300 billion industry entailing millions of jobs. CurbWaste has been taking the industry out of the pen-and-paper age, and that’s why we are proud to invest in its $28M Series B. The round, led by Socium Ventures, builds on the $10M Series A we led at the end of 2023. Since then, CurbWaste has grown its customer base to about 150 haulers over 40 states and continue to scale three digit y/y revenue growth. Customers include leaders such as TKI, Capitol Waste and Super Waste. The comprehensive CurbWaste platform provides order and route management, live tracking, automated invoicing, and real time data reporting. The New York-based company will be using the new round to fund additional enterprise offerings and deepening its AI-powered automation. Curbwaste's founder & CEO, Michael Marmo, hails from four generations in the waste management industry which provides him with a degree of familiarity and expertise required to drive the industry into a new era. As Mike told @WasteDive: "We’re not a grow-at-all-costs business, we’re very much a customer-focused business. We’re asking companies to trust us with their business, and I take that very seriously." Congratulations to Mike and the CurbWaste team. Honored to be an ongoing part of the CurbWaste journey! Socium Ventures, TTV Capital, B Capital, Mucker Capital, John Onwualu, Lizzie (Guynn) Hartley, Patrick Harmon Lopez, and David Yang.

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Had a great time at DC Startup & Tech Week (Formerly DC Startup Week) moderating a panel with Scott Christensen (Chesapeake Bay Seed Capital Fund (CBSCF) , Faith Davis (Exelon) and Bill McNulty (NextEra Energy Investments), convened by the great C'pher Gresham. Here's a quick recap: 1) The panelists were phenomenal - a mixture of corporate, state and foundation-backed VC's all focusing on climate. They're actively funding companies across a range of sectors - e.g. nature-based solutions, energy + AI, water, etc. Point being, we were lucky to have experts with such broad purviews. 2) The current climate could be pushing at least some climate VC's to focus on software and move away from hardware, at least temporarily. This type of capital may indeed just be better suited for software companies at this juncture. It also reflects the fact that certain segments of the climate-tech market are just more mature than others - e.g. software performs best once the hardware and the business case around it are solid, then it becomes and optimization and efficiency game. 3) Founders need to target "must-solve" climate problems from the investor lens. In other words, yes there's a sea of climate challenges where startups can be additive. However, in this environment, few of these areas are attracting meaningful capital. There's nothing wrong with tackling problem areas that are under-invested, we need this in spades. However, for those trying to get capital in the door, realize the constraints that come with targeting problems that investors just aren't prioritizing. 4) Look to funders overseas. The EU, where so much climate finance, policy and general expertise has come from, could be playing a much more important role. I'd also argue that Gulf countries like KSA and UAE are going to be critical here too, not to mention China, of course. 5) We need mentoring and coaching to be at an all-time high. With so much uncertainty, networks/communities where both founders and investors can learn from/lean on each other have never been more important. The panel/audience was a nice microcosm of the types of support networks we need to be actively building. Big thanks again to C'pher, Faith, Scott and Bill, as well as the whole DC Startup + Tech Week team. Til next year!

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