Articles By Shayne Fitz-Coy

A comprehensive archive of Shayne Fitz-Coy’s written work, spanning original site exclusives and syndicated contributions to Forbes, Inc., Fast Company, and Entrepreneur.

This library gathers Shayne Fitz-Coy’s writing on acquisition, patient capital, and operating leadership, drawn from a career spent buying good businesses and building strong teams.

My work starts from one conviction: the best returns come from owning excellent businesses for a very long time and improving them from the inside.

Most capital is impatient. It buys to sell, optimizes for the exit, and hands back a business no stronger than it found it.

I seek to build the opposite. Through Sabot Family Companies, the long-term holding firm I co-founded with Arar Han in 2016, I acquire founder-led and family businesses and hold them, funding growth from patient capital rather than a countdown to resale.

I buy on a simple filter and operate on a disciplined one:

• Acquire durable businesses with honest economics and real room to improve.
• Underwrite the people first, because a capable, engaged team compounds value long after the deal closes.
• Lean in operationally to fix what blocks growth.
• Fund the long arc with permanent capital, co-investing alongside partners like Housatonic Partners when scale calls for it.
• Compound, holding for decades and reinvesting, so ownership becomes an enduring, revenue-generating asset.

I run what I own as a classroom. Teams learn faster than they are told, mistakes become case studies, and capability compounds.

I proved it under pressure. Through Sabot Family Companies, I acquired Rustic Pathways and stepped in as CEO in January 2020, and the pandemic shut down global travel two months later. I held, rebuilt the company for the long term, and brought it back to industry leadership while short-horizon competitors went dormant.

Earlier, I took ResponseLink from a distressed turnaround into a durably profitable business, before selling it in 2025.

That thesis now runs across the Sabot Family Companies portfolio, where my partners and I buy well, operate patiently, and hold for the long term, turning good businesses into enduring ones.