General Atlantic veteran Dzialga’s Brighton Park tops Fund I’s $750m target

Brighton Park Capital, founded early last year by ex-General Atlantic managing director Mark Dzialga, secured more than $835 million for its debut growth equity offering.

Brighton Park Capital Fund I and a sidecar pool together accounted for the total, Form D fundraising documents filed this month showed. The fund is running ahead of a target of $750 million, a person with knowledge of the matter told Buyouts.

Brighton Park is not yet ready to wrap up fundraising, the person said, adding the offering has a hard cap of $1 billion.

Fund I, launched last October, has so far signed up 84 limited partners for the main vehicle and 26 LPs for the sidecar, the Form Ds showed. Its disclosed investors include South Carolina Retirement System, which is committing $75 million. Lazard is the placement agent.

Brighton Park is the latest emerging manager to be beating the odds in a tough fundraising market. PE firms with first-time pools are facing more challenges due to the covid-19 pandemic. A few, however, appear to be faring well. They include firms led by general partners spun out of large, brand-name managers, Buyouts reported in June.

Dzialga was for more than two decades an executive with General Atlantic, one of the market’s best-known growth equity firms. He was a member of the investment committee from 2003 to 2018, according to Brighton Park’s website, chairing the body from 2007 to 2017. He also helped General Atlantic expand its operations in Asia, Europe and Latin America.

Dzialga led or played a key role in General Atlantic investments in companies in end-markets like consumer goods, financial services, healthcare, internet and software. He was a director of several businesses, such as energy efficiency specialist CLEAResult, sold in 2018 to TPG, and audio-visual products distributor SnapAV, sold in 2017 to Hellman & Friedman.

Before joining General Atlantic in 1998, Dzialga was co-head of the technology M&A group at Goldman Sachs.

Targeting growth 

Dzialga drew on this experience in creating Brighton Park. The Greenwich, Connecticut, firm specializes in growth equity investing in software, information services, technology-enabled services and healthcare, its ADV filings showed. It makes both control and minority investments in lower mid-market companies based mostly in North America and which are profitable or on a path to profitability.

Partnering with CEOs, families and founders, Brighton Park deploys an operationally focused strategy to help accelerate business expansion, organically and through acquisitions. It has a special advisory group to support value-creation initiatives in the portfolio.

Dzialga oversees a partnership team of five. They include COO and CCO Erica Blob, who joined from New Mountain Capital; Mike Gregoire, formerly chairman and CEO of CA Technologies; Zachary Gut, formerly a principal with Apax Digital; and Jeff Machlin, who like Dzialga came from General Atlantic, where he was a vice president.

Brighton Park made five platform investments, three of them in 2020, its website showed. They include RocketReach, an intelligence platform used by sales, marketing and recruiting teams. Brighton Park in August said it acquired a majority stake in the company.

Earlier this year, Brighton Park led a $40 million financing of Paradox, a conversational AI platform for human resources teams. It also led the $40 million financing of Glassbox, an analytics business that helps optimize user experiences on web and mobile apps.

Brighton Park declined to provide a comment on this story.

Action item: Check out Brighton Park Capital’s ADV filings here.