FOUNDER, super-majority owner and CEO Sean Mooney MBA confirmed that his 9-year-old BluWave LP recently received $14MM cash investment for accelerating growth of its digital network marketplace, which is an "execution and value-creation resources platform" for private equity firms and portfolio companies seeking professional service providers and interim executives.

The round was by anchored by investment from New York City's Highmount Capital LLC, with participation by Boston-based HighSage Ventures and others.

In 2016, Brentwood-based BluWave raised $1MM via a friends and family round. Until its new investors stepped-in, it had grown in bootstrap fashion, and now has 50 employees.

Mooney emphasized the company is "always hiring," with current emphasis on AI, development, go-to-market and client-development coverage. He also emphasized the firm scouts for "special players" and strong candidates are evaluated using BluWave tools and techniques.

Most of the $15MM in capital that BluWave has attracted since its inception and relocation with his family to the Nashville area has originated with investors  in the New York and Boston areas, the CEO confirmed.

PERFORMANCE

Mooney explained that "every function in a business" can use BluWave-registered third-party advisors to increase revenues, optimize costs, get talented people, conduct due diligence on deals, transform portfolio companies' competitiveness, and put strategies and technologies in-place when and where PE firms and their assets need them.

He explained that BluWave can rapidly execute on complex PE requirements, delivering three freshly vetted candidates for any PE requirement within about 0.8 business day. Even a highly mechanized PE firm would probably need to devote anywhere from 40 hours to four weeks to achieve similar results.

As an online marketplace, BluWave  is compensated at a "take rate" or commission based on the value of each transaction between advisors and private equity firms and-or PE porfolio firms.

Its addressable market in the PE sector, alone, is $11BN annually, involving 6,000 PE firms and about 25,000 portfolio companies.

David Hawkins

Highmount Capital General Partner David Hawkins said in an Oct. 29 press release, “BluWave has built a category-creating platform that is quickly becoming indispensable to private equity firms by helping them find and engage the ideal consultants to add value to portfolio companies and due diligence processes. We are highly impressed with Sean and his team and deeply aligned with their vision."

In addition to having an attractive model, Mooney said the company is growing because its platform's advancement is driven by a management team that knows the pressures PE and startups are under.

The team also knows that in dealing with financial professionals the team must execute in ways that are "excellent, hyper-fast, extremely valuable" and consistently reliable. PEs remember screw-ups forever, added the former private equity partner.

BluWave has been profitable since 2017, which he said was a "learn and pivot year." Early in 2017, Mooney had a conversation with a prominent Nashville tech entrepreneur that re-set Mooney's thinking and led to BlueWave's shifting-away from the SaaS financial model, toward a "consumption" model," in which users pay only when they use the platform's services.

The shift was quickly validated in the market, he told VNC.

His team's wide professional connections also paid-off in BlueWave stealing a march on some would-be competitors.

For example, The BluWave team was contemplating augmenting their machine-learning tools with AI and had begun intensely tracking relevant AI technologic advances.

Mooney and his colleagues regularly touched-base with AI-centric professionals, asking recognized experts at multiple points "Whether or not the robots were smart enough" to support a new business model.

Responses to their periodic queries were negative for several years--and experts warned that pursuing large language model (LLM) AI development would require a budget "the size of Apple's," Mooney recalled.

Then, in spring 2021, a BluWave touchpoint said unequivocally that the "robots" had, indeed, become smart enough.

Almost immediately after that, BluWave began using "multiple ML techniques." Its work has steadily advanced since then and its AI/ML-forward platform enjoys an edge it continues to sharpen.

Today, BluWave's market network platform connects more than 500 private equity firms and their aggregated thousands of portfolio companies with "top-tier boutique professional service providers and interim executives," according to the firm's Oct. 29 press release. Beyond portcos, the platform performs equally well in the context of due diligence for M&A transactions.

PROSPECTS

Asked about exit scenarios, without hesitation Mooney explained that taking-on professional capital is logically consistent with an eventual exit, though naturally entrepreneurs aim to exit "when the time is right."

He acknowledged that having taken on significant capital in a priced round could lead to accepting additional private capital or, hypothetically, selling to a strategic bidder who believes they are possessed of a "game-changing" strategy for expansion and increased valuation.

In weighing options, it's good to remember that the past is prologue to the future, particularly in the tech sector.

Offering a major example, Mooney noted that in the mid- to late-Nineties there was "unrestrained enthusiasm" around the hypothesis that the Internet was a "strategy," whereas nowadays most folks consider the Internet a "tactic," i.e., a set of actions and tools that help execute strategy, which sets long-term direction and business priorities.

He also mentioned how "zero-sum hyperscaling" by major actors has influenced the trajectory of many AI-forward firms.

Mooney went no farther on that point, but VNC notes that hyperscaling is viewed by critics as focused on seeking rapid market domination, aggressive concentration of capital and talent, a "growth at any cost" mindset, locking-out competitors, etc. In contrast, hyperscaling advocates often asserts that it can expand existing markets, and create new markets and value rather than simply dominating them, hyperscaling cultivates collaboration, open innovation, and other socioeconomic goods.

Mooney also underscored that he believes tech-centric entrepreneurs are recognizing that, wisely used, AI deployment can mean "every dollar goes at least 3X farther" than it might without AI, resulting in lengthier operational runway with less reliance on equity capital investment that comes with economic, control and opportunity costs.

The founder said the advent and diffusion of AI are both exciting and challenging, because "the pace of change is faster than it every has been in the history of the world. If you run toward these new tools that have extraordinary impact on your business," entrepreneurs must prepare for their eventual obsolescence.

"Fortune is 100% going to reward the agile," he added, but will punish many others with many nights of lost sleep.

Asked about competitors, Mooney asserted the company has no direct competitors, but sees activity in some adjacent sectors, in which he believes at least five consulting companies' attempts to compete without adequate tech capacity have ended in failure. 

PEOPLE & PLACES

In addition to Mooney, the company's senior management team includes CFO Jeff Berry MBA; VP Marketing Brian Grant MBA; Head of Technology & Insights Houston Slatton MBA; AI Director Sam O'Mullane PhD, based in Seattle; Managing Director, Head of Research & Operations Keenan Kolinsky M.Ed.; and, Managing Director, Head of Client Coverage Scott Bellinger.

Asked about his company's own advisors, Mooney first noted that BluWave naturally uses its own platform to identify and onboard specialized advisors.

In fact, he made clear he believes participants in the BluWave platform represent "the best private-equity operations team" in existence worldwide.

BluWave also relies on attorneys with Spencer Fane and with Cooley; accountants with Cherry Bekaert; and, bankers with both Pinnacle Bank and Bank of America. Its recent press release was handled by Stanton PRM (NYC).

The founder said moving his family to Nashville was the result of using multifactorial profiling of large U.S. markets.

The ranking factors he used nine years ago included taxes ("obviously"), quality of life, healthcare systems, public and private K-12 education, presence of a premiere university, strong state and private postsecondary institutions, weather, and airline routes.

Mooney's prior career included appointments within private equity firm SFW Capital Partners, Key Principal Partners (KPP, later Cyprium Partners), Houlihan Lokey, and multiple board director appointments. His LinkedIn is here.

Now age 50, Mooney was born in Cleveland, Ohio, and reared in Austin. He and his family moved to Williamson County in 2016.

He earned his MBA at Columbia Business School of Columbia University, and his bachelor's at Georgetown University's McDonough School of Business. VNC

last corrected 4 November 2025 1790