The Platform
The operator-led platform.
Growth capital paired with embedded engineering, go-to-market, and governance. Built for B2B SaaS founders at €0.5M–€3M ARR.
Why most growth-stage SaaS struggles
Between €1M and €10M of annual recurring revenue, most B2B SaaS companies hit a structurally similar wall. Product-market fit is established. The next phase requires engineering throughput the founder cannot personally deliver, sales motion the team has not yet codified, and governance practices that did not exist when the company was twelve people. The classical response is to raise a Series B and hire ahead of the curve.
The classical response is increasingly inadequate.
Capital costs more than it did. Hiring cycles in the UK, Germany, the Netherlands, and the Nordics have lengthened from weeks to quarters. The half-life of a strategy decision has shortened. The market rewards companies that compound revenue with discipline, not those that raise twice the capital and double burn to chase the same milestones.
A different structure is required: capital paired with operating capacity, deployed against milestones, with control retained by the founder. That is the platform we have built.
What the platform is
TGC Capital Partners operates as a single integrated platform across four functional pillars. Founders engage with the platform through a single partnership; the underlying capability is drawn from the broader Gateway Group operating organization.
1. Embedded engineering
The throughput problem is the most acute. A €2M ARR company cannot ship a new commercial module, harden its data architecture, integrate with three new customer systems, and rebuild its onboarding - all in a single quarter - using its existing twelve engineers. It also cannot hire its way out in time.
We deploy embedded engineering teams of two to thirty engineers, drawn from the Gateway Group operating organization with delivery presence aligned to our target markets. Teams are assigned full-time, integrated with the founder's CTO, and remain in place for the duration of the operating thesis. We do not staff projects. We deploy capability.
More on embedded engineering →
2. Growth capital
Capital is deployed as minority equity. Tranches are sized against operating milestones the founder helps define - typically a combination of revenue thresholds, gross-margin improvements, and product-delivery checkpoints. Average initial cheque sizes are confidential, but the structure is uniform: founder-friendly, anti-dilution-light, with no liquidation preference stacked above 1× non-participating.
We do not lead syndicates that include capital-only growth funds; we either provide the operating capacity or we step aside. This is a deliberate constraint. It keeps incentives aligned and prevents the platform from being treated as a sourcing service for unrelated capital.
More on growth capital structure →
3. Go-to-market
Most European B2B SaaS companies under-invest in commercial discipline relative to their American peers - not by intention, but by absence of the operating playbooks. We deploy GTM specialists across pricing, sales motion design, partner-channel strategy, customer success architecture, and outbound infrastructure. The deliverable is not a slide deck; it is a working sales operation that runs after we leave.
4. Governance for scale
Companies that intend to be acquired by, sold to, or matured into public-market candidates require governance practices most founders have not yet had to build. Audit-ready financials. Board reporting that an institutional buyer will accept. Information security and data governance that survives diligence. Equity administration that does not collapse under a secondary transaction.
We provide the governance specialists who build these systems before they are needed, on the timeline a serious exit demands.
More on governance for scale →
How an engagement begins
Every engagement begins with a 90-day diagnostic. The output is a written document - typically thirty to fifty pages - covering engineering velocity, unit economics, commercial efficiency, governance maturity, and a 24-month operating thesis. The diagnostic is delivered whether or not the partnership proceeds; we do not gate diagnostic work behind a closed transaction.
If both parties elect to proceed, term sheets are issued within forty-five days of the diagnostic delivery. Capital and operating teams are deployed concurrently. The first operating review is conducted ninety days after closing.
What we do not do
- We do not invest in B2C, deep tech, hardware, or capital-intensive sectors outside software.
- We do not invest below €0.5M ARR; product-market fit must be evidenced.
- We do not lead seed rounds. Other vehicles in the Gateway Group ecosystem may participate; TGC Capital Partners does not.
- We do not pursue control transactions. Majority recapitalisations are explicitly out of scope.
- We do not staff our operating teams from third parties; every operator deployed is a Gateway Group employee, accountable to the same governance we ask portfolio companies to adopt.
Outcomes
Across more than forty engagements, the operator-led model has delivered measurable improvements in engineering throughput, gross margin, and capital efficiency relative to capital-only comparables in the same vintage. Specific outcomes vary by company and stage; representative case studies are published, with founder consent, in Insights and on individual portfolio narrative pages.