Pacific Lake Partners

Jim Southern

Jim is a Co-Founder and Managing Member of Pacific Lake Partners and a successful search fund entrepreneur. Once himself a beneficiary of the model, Jim launched the first search fund in 1984 under the mentorship of then Harvard Business School professor H. Irving Grousbeck. This fund resulted in the acquisition of Uniform Printing, a $43 million printer of specialty insurance documents. Jim served as the company’s CEO and Chairman for 10 years. Investor returns under Jim's tenure as CEO were 24x the acquisition capital.

Jim has invested in over 75 search funds as an individual investor and with Pacific Lake. He currently serves on the Board of Directors of AlphaCredit, Arizona College, and BEX Realty. He is often a guest speaker on the search fund model at Stanford's Graduate School of Business and Harvard Business School and is the subject of an HBS case on his first search fund acquisition. Jim holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and resides in Wolfeboro, NH, and Boston, MA.

Coley Andrews

Coley is the Managing Member and co-founder of Pacific Lake Partners, a firm focused exclusively on the search fund model. Since co-founding Pacific Lake in 2009 with search fund pioneer Jim Southern, Coley has worked with over 200 search funds worldwide. Pacific Lake has over $750 million dedicated exclusively to search fund investing.

Coley is a board member of multiple search fund companies including, Morningside Translations, IS Entrega, Inspired eLearning, Circle Surrogacy and is an observer at AlphaCredit.

Prior to forming Pacific Lake, Coley worked for Golden Gate Capital, a private equity firm in San Francisco, and in management consulting for The Parthenon Group. Coley graduated from Dartmouth College and has an MBA from Stanford’s Graduate School of Business. Coley, his wife Alisa, and their four children live outside Boston, MA.

Kevin Oxendine

Kevin is a Partner at Pacific Lake Partners where he brings experience as a successful executive and operator.  Kevin works closely with search fund entrepreneurs throughout their search, acquisition and operating phases and is a board member of Emporos and Kantola.  Prior to joining Pacific Lake in 2018, Kevin was an active Special LP.  He brings special expertise to software and technology-enabled businesses given his industry experience.

Kevin is a two-time successful CEO/COO.  At Wistia, a video SaaS company, Kevin led all business functions, including sales, finance, marketing, customer support, people operations, and business development.  Over his three years at Wistia, the company grew from $8M to over to $30M in ARR before Kevin executed a PE-backed recapitalization.  At Havit, a consulting firm, Kevin grew the firm from $6M to $36M in capitalized billings over three years. 

Kevin graduated from the University of Maryland where he received the H.C. Byrd Award and earned an MBA from Stanford’s Graduate School of Business as an Arjay Miller Scholar.  Kevin resides just outside of Boston, MA with his wife, Kate, and their two sons, Teddy and Chase.

Keith Gross

Keith is a Partner at Pacific Lake Partners. Since joining the firm, Keith has worked with over 75 search fund entrepreneurs and been involved in over 20 operating company acquisitions. Prior to joining Pacific Lake in 2015, Keith was an Associate at Hellman & Friedman in San Francisco. He began his career in the Investment Banking Division at Goldman Sachs, where he worked on M&A and capital markets transactions.

Keith has worked closely with the entrepreneurs and Boards of Directors of several Pacific Lake portfolio companies, including Arizona College, Falcon Critical Care Transport, IS Logistica, Chronus, and Omatic.

Keith graduated as valedictorian from Hamilton College with a degree in mathematics and economics and earned his MBA from Stanford’s Graduate School of Business. Keith currently resides in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife, Tina.