The Portfolio Companies Behind Solen Software Group
Solen Software Group is a permanent-capital partner that acquires and operates founder-built, mission-critical software companies serving specialized markets. The companies behind Solen include AutoTime, Cairn Applications, Champ Software, Cooperative Technologies, DTEC, FMSI, NexTalk, Primate Technologies, SHEA, smrtr, Spokane Software Systems, Track Star, Trackit and viaPeople. Each one keeps its own name, team and customers, while Solen carries the back office and invests in what comes next.
This guide explains who those companies are, why they joined, and how Solen works with them from the first conversation onward. If you lead a software company and are thinking about its next chapter, it is written for you.
What Is Solen Software Group?
Solen’s mission is to build, operate and invest in enduring software businesses, and to elevate the leaders, teams and organizations behind them. The vision is simple to state. Solen wants to be the long-term home of choice for founder-built, mission-critical software businesses and the people who built them.
The investment philosophy follows from that. Solen brings companies into the portfolio to keep them. Each company is judged on what it can become over the next decade, and the work that follows is shaped around its customers, its product and its team.
The brand promise sums it up. We amplify what has made your company great.
Why Alexander Spencer Founded Solen Software Group
Alexander Spencer founded Solen Software Group to create a permanent home for enduring software businesses. An engineer and software entrepreneur, Alexander believed strong founder-built companies should have the opportunity to keep compounding with no predefined end date for ownership.
That idea became the foundation of Solen Software Group: permanent capital, long-term ownership and an operator-led model designed to preserve what already makes a company successful while investing in what comes next. Solen’s companies retain their identities, teams, customer relationships and operating autonomy, while gaining access to additional resources, leadership support and a broader community of software operators.
For Alexander, the model is as much about people as it is about software. He has built Solen around the belief that software companies are more than financial assets. They are teams, products, customer relationships, cultures and years of accumulated knowledge that deserve to be treated accordingly.
That philosophy continues to shape how Alexander Spencer leads Solen Software Group today: thinking in decades, developing strong leaders and giving mission-critical software businesses the time and investment they need to keep growing. Solen’s permanent-capital structure is specifically intended to support long-term decisions rather than preparing companies for another transaction.
How Does Solen’s Evergreen Capital Model Work?
Solen invests permanent capital, sometimes called evergreen capital. The capital has no fund life and no return date, so ownership has no predefined end date either. A company that joins Solen is held for the long term.
That changes how decisions get made. A product rebuild that pays back over ten years is a sound investment when the owner plans to be there in ten years. Solen also invests committed capital with no financing contingency, which gives founders certainty on timing from the first meeting.
We think in decades.
Where Is Solen Based, and Where Does It Operate?
Solen is headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah, where the firm began and where much of its leadership and shared services team sits.
From there, Solen has grown into offices across three regions. New York City and Toronto support corporate development in North America. Lisbon anchors Solen’s presence in Europe. São Paulo is home to the corporate development team for Latin America, and São Carlos, Brazil houses the Solen AI Innovation Center.
Solen’s signature line describes how this works in practice. Global support, local command. Founders talk to a corporate development team in their own region and time zone, and the operating support behind them draws on people across all six offices. A question raised in Lisbon in the morning reaches Salt Lake City the same working day.
What Kind of Companies Join the Solen Portfolio?
Solen looks for three things in a company, and they tend to show up early in a first conversation.
Mission-Critical Software
The software sits at the center of its customers’ daily work. When it stops, orders stop moving, schedules stop filling and people stop getting paid. That position is earned over years, and it is the foundation of a business built to last.
Founder-Built and Resilient
The companies in the Solen portfolio were built by people who knew their industry and their customers by name. Many have served the same market for decades, through downturns and technology shifts, and Solen looks for resilient software businesses with lasting customer relationships and stable teams. That resilience is a large part of what Solen invests in, and it reflects the enduring nature of the business over many years.
Stable Recurring Revenue and a Strong Customer Base
Solen looks for durable, contracted recurring revenue, typically 70 percent or more of software revenue, alongside high customer retention, happy customers, and a broad customer base without heavy concentration in a few accounts. Growth and profit margin matter, and neither is a fixed requirement. Solen is industry and location agnostic within its coverage markets, with portfolio companies in areas including HR technology and fleet management.
What Support Do Portfolio Companies Receive?
Every company that joins Solen gains access to the same shared foundation. The goal is to take on the work that drains a leader’s week without improving the product.
Centralized Finance and HR
Accounting, financial reporting, payroll and HR move to Solen’s shared teams. Reporting becomes cleaner and more predictable, hiring gets easier, and leaders get their time back.
Jacob Reeves, General Manager of FMSI, described the effect. “I came on after the long-term partnership with Solen was in place and the shared services piece was already running. That kind of overhead just gets handled, and it makes a real difference in where leadership puts their energy.”
Legal, Compliance and Administrative Support
Contracts, legal questions, compliance obligations and day-to-day administration are handled by people who do that work across the whole portfolio. A company that once relied on its founder for all of it gains a team with the experience to carry it.
The Solen AI Innovation Center and Technology Modernization
The Solen AI Innovation Center in São Carlos, Brazil, launched in September 2026. It works alongside company leaders to find where AI creates long-term value, from modernizing existing software to accelerating time to market and building new product capabilities.
Each company sets its own AI priorities based on its customers and its market. Technology modernization reaches beyond AI too. Track Star’s product went through a full modernization after it joined the portfolio.
How Does Solen Partner With Founders?
Permanent Capital With No Predefined End Date
A founder who partners with Solen is choosing the last owner the company will need; the aim is long-term ownership while preserving what already works for customers and the team. There is no fund clock and no planned handoff to a future owner. The plan for the company is built around its customers and its team, over the long term.
Flexible Founder Roles
Every founder wants something different from the next chapter, so the role after joining the portfolio is flexible. Some founders stay on and keep leading the business. Some move into an advisory role and stay close to the product and the customers they know best. Others step away fully, with a planned leadership handover that protects the team and the customers. There is no relocation requirement for the founder or the team.
Culture, Teams and Legacy Stay Intact
Company names, brands, teams, billing systems, and customer relationships stay in place unless a change clearly adds value, reflecting Solen's focus on how it works with each business. A founder has usually spent years earning the trust of customers who know the product, the people and the way the company works. That continuity is a large part of what Solen invests in, and protecting it is how a founder's legacy carries forward.
Teams notice the difference quickly. Leaders also want to stay proud of what the company becomes after joining Solen.
How Does Solen Create Value After a Company Joins?
Growth Playbooks
Solen’s operators have led software companies themselves, and they bring playbooks built on that experience. The work centers on three areas, with Solen looking for growth initiatives with real potential to help companies achieve the next stage of expansion:
Customer retention, so the customers who depend on the software keep getting more from it.
Product development, so the roadmap moves faster than it did before.
Sales and go-to-market, including a fractional chief revenue officer model for companies ready to build a stronger sales motion.
Reinvestment follows what a business has demonstrated. Where the growth opportunity is real, Solen and the company’s leaders decide together how to fund it using Solen’s resources where they can support execution.
Operational Excellence and Support That Lifts Non-Core Work
The shared back office is only part of it. Talent programs and the Solen Business System are built to drive operational excellence and help each company grow. They give each company and its management teams access to expertise they would struggle to hire on their own, with non-core functions supported so great teams can stay focused on customers and product.
Collaboration and Transparency
Solen’s leadership principles, the Solenisms, shape how the portfolio works together. Candor means integrity, transparency and respect in every conversation. Mutual Elevation means growing teams and developing future leaders. Kaizen means small improvements that compound over time.
Portfolio leaders have access to all the other leaders, so a problem one company has solved does not have to be solved twice. Solen has its ear firmly to the ground and is able to listen to operators and surface ideas that can help other companies.
Travis Gollaher, General Manager of NexTalk, described it simply. “There’s always someone I can call. Other GMs, operating partners, people who’ve solved the same problems. You just have access to that when you’re part of Solen.”
What Does the Acquisition and Due Diligence Process Look Like?
Solen’s process has four phases, and it is built to give founders a clear answer quickly on a software acquisition while reducing disruption for founders and their teams.
Introductory call and data request. A conversation about fit, the business and the founder’s goals, followed by a short request for information. Founders usually know within two weeks whether Solen is a good fit.
Founder to founder. A conversation with Solen Founder & CEO Alexander Spencer about what the founder wants for the business, the team and themselves.
Valuation and structure. Solen sets out its proposal and the two sides agree how the partnership will be structured.
Due diligence. Financial, customer, technical and legal review, coordinated so questions come in an organized way.
Documentation and Timeline Expectations
Early on, Solen asks for recent financial statements, a view of recurring revenue and customer retention, and an overview of the product, the customers and the team. The data room comes together during diligence, with Solen’s team guiding what goes into it.
Founders do not need perfect financials to start. Solen helps build the P&L where it needs work. From first meeting to funding typically takes 45 to 60 days, and because Solen invests committed capital with no financing contingency, the timeline holds once it is set.
What Happens After a Company Joins the Portfolio?
A Decentralized Working Model
Decisions that touch customers, product and people stay with the leaders who already know the business. Solen’s principle is simplification, not control, helping companies keep day-to-day operations running smoothly while decisions stay close to customers and product. A company keeps setting its own priorities, with a partner behind it that has done this before.
Back-Office Functions Move to Shared Teams
Finance, HR, legal and administration move to Solen’s shared teams in the months after joining. The handover is planned with the company’s leaders so customers and employees see continuity from day one.
Existing Leaders Are Empowered
The people who built the company’s reputation keep leading it, and they gain a network to lean on.
Travis Gollaher described what that meant when he stepped in to lead NexTalk. “Coming into NexTalk, I had Solen’s whole network behind me from day one. That changes what you’re able to do as a leader.”
What Results Have Solen Portfolio Companies Seen?
Founder Success Stories
Track Star is the clearest example. After joining the portfolio, the non-core back office came off the team’s desk, the product went through a full modernization and a mobile app launched. Revenue grew roughly 40 percent through acquisition, and founder Mike Hughes moved into an advisory role.
Founders also speak to how the partnership felt from the start. Rita Patterson, Co-founder of Primate Technologies, said, “Solen’s investments and business knowledge are providing a great future for Primate’s customers and employees!”
Growth Milestones
Solen Software Group has been named to the Inc. 5000 two years in a row. In 2026 it ranked number 214 overall, number 18 in software and number 2 in the Salt Lake City metro area, with three-year growth of 1,563.87 percent. Solen is also Great Place to Work Certified for the second year running, and was named to Axial’s 2026 Top 50 Lower Middle Market Technology Investors list.
How Can a Founder Start a Conversation With Solen?
Reach Out to the Solen Team
The simplest first step is to reach out through the Solen contact page. Someone from the Solen team will reply and connect you with the right corporate development lead.
Share Introductory Materials
A short overview of the business is enough to begin. Recent financials, a summary of recurring revenue and customer retention, and a few lines on your product, customers and team help the first conversation go further. If some of it is not ready, send what you have.
Plan the Follow-Up Conversations
After the first call, founders usually hear within two weeks whether Solen is a good fit. From there, the founder-to-founder conversation, structure and diligence follow on a clear schedule, and the full path from first meeting to funding typically takes 45 to 60 days.
If you are thinking about what comes next for the company you built, and you want it to stay itself, reach out to the Solen team. We are glad to talk, whenever the timing is right for you.
Not ready for a conversation? Follow Solen on LinkedIn to see how we are building for the long term.
Frequently Asked Questions
What Companies Are in the Solen Software Group Portfolio?
The Solen portfolio includes AutoTime, Cairn Applications, Champ Software, Cooperative Technologies, DTEC, FMSI, NexTalk, Primate Technologies, SHEA, smrtr, Spokane Software Systems, Track Star, Trackit and viaPeople. Each is a mission-critical software business serving a specialized market.
Where Is Solen Software Group Headquartered?
Solen is headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah, with offices in New York City, Toronto, Lisbon and São Paulo, and the Solen AI Innovation Center in São Carlos, Brazil.
What Is Evergreen or Permanent Capital?
Permanent capital, also called evergreen capital, has no fund life and no return date. A permanent-capital partner such as Solen holds the companies it acquires for the long term, with no predefined end date for ownership.
Does a Founder Have to Leave After Joining Solen?
No. Founder involvement is flexible. Some founders keep leading the business, some move into an advisory role, and others step away fully with a planned leadership handover.
How Long Does It Take to Join the Solen Portfolio?
From first meeting to funding typically takes 45 to 60 days. Founders usually know within two weeks of a first conversation whether Solen is a good fit.