Welcome to George Austin, a firm of integrity, where we follow through on a time-honored, Texas tradition – we do what we say and we say what we mean.
George Austin is a privately held investment firm, deploying patient capital to maximize value for all stakeholders. We strategically invest in lower middle market businesses typically characterized by higher-margin, higher-growth opportunities and/or stable assets with predictable cash flow.
We invest in unique, profitable assets with proven and emerging technologies that fundamentally change industry and society.
We are committed to being good citizens and leaders within the communities in which we serve, with an unwavering commitment to uphold the Values we espouse.
We set a high benchmark of excellence through continuously building upon our high standards, with the expectation of ethical performance over the convenience of excuse. We acknowledge and reward performance and excellence with integrity.
To generate long-term, stable and repeatable returns, we are loyal to those stakeholders (Limited Partners/Investors, Business Owners, Our Communities) who brought us to the party. We believe in radical transparency and authenticity.
George Austin is the privately held alternative investment arm on behalf of the Ashmore family, its friends and extended family. Our ‘Friends & Family Office Fund’ (FAFOF) seeks this dual strategy of portfolio investing in energy (Minerals/Royalties, E&P, OFS Tech), BioTech and MedTech, that solve fundamental global health issues, critical needs such as next generation technologies helping to isolate and solve terminal and chronic illness. We look for companies and solutions which generate predictable cash-flowing yield.
We opportunistically investing in unique businesses with significant upside whereby the investment portfolio translates into the best of both worlds: the optionality of distributable cash flow, shorter-term ‘wins’ and longer-term, patient capital seeking higher returns, executing and wisely mitigating downsize risk, while fundamentally doing global good.
Simply put: We invest in good people with good businesses that have real and meaningful upside, who need access to financial and human capital. We help good people and good companies convert those opportunities into greater market share, greater profitability and overall risk-adjusted return.
We invest in good people with good businesses that have real and meaningful upside, who need access to financial and human capital. We help good people and good companies convert those opportunities into greater market share, greater profitability and overall risk-adjusted return.
To find and create opportunity in Oil & Gas Minerals/Royalties, OFS Tech, emerging BioTech-MedTech and Real Estate through creativity, honesty and grit.
To become the standard-bearer of profitable investors and operators by which others are measured, using the rewards of commerce to create lasting legacy.
Genuine & Authentic. Who We Are is How We Treat Others When No One is Looking. Simply put: We treat all with mutual respect and integrity. The following Values say the same thing in a different way: Loyal – “Staying True to Those Who Are True”
After proposing to Kelli in the White House, George Austin was unofficially founded by Kelli & Garrett Ashmore in 2004, when they joined together to form a life-long union with the goal of creating a family legacy of social and moral impact, using the rewards of commerce as the vehicle for that change.
After more than a decade of developing numerous successful companies and advising countless others in mergers & acquisitions in investment banking, George Austin was officially established in late 2018.
The name George Austin is the combination of Kelli and Garrett’s two beloved undergrad alma maters – Washington, D.C.’s Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service. Kelli attended Stephen F. Austin State University with a major in Kinesiology and Elementary Education, having a heart for children, children in need and the impact that athletics can play in a child’s overall well-being. Both schools, their namesakes and respective towns are steeped in rich tradition, heritage, history and legacy – home to some of our greatest forefathers and founders of this blessed nation and state – ones with such foresight, wisdom and an unbridled grit to take action on their guided principals.
Hence, George Austin was born as a humble nod to those institutions that have forged such an impact on this great state, nation, having personally and positively shaped the lives of so many.
At a young age, Garrett Ashmore has always been driven to succeed and make lasting impact. Always the entrepreneur, while at Georgetown, he started his first ‘meaningful’ businesses, in his dorm room.
With a phone line and a fax machine, Ashmore traded goats to the Middle East and Texas, helping create a market conduit between the two, negotiating ever-so fragile deals between Arabs and Texas ranchers, a delicate balancing act at the age of 20.
Through that process, he helped create an informal forward market in the goat industry, learning the fundamentals of trading, pricing/volatility and risk management with the greatest of global teachers – his Arab buyers. As an extension in the US, he brokered other agricultural commodities such as cheese, fish and refined ag products, supplying fish to one of the nation’s largest fast-casual restaurant chains and one of the nation’s largest hotel and hospitality companies for a short period of time.
As a result of all of these endeavors, Ashmore was nominated as a Rhodes Scholar Finalist. While he didn’t receive the scholarship, the experience of starting businesses purely out of an idea and the realization that one can do the initially unthinkable, fueled a fire to build and help others build profitable entities and to judiciously seize opportunity that others may not initially see.
Upon graduation, Ashmore worked at Enron, where he learned the many nuanced facets of the energy industry – deepening his trading and trading risk management experience, to oil & gas pipeline transportation & development, production, structuring and deal-making.
For a 25-year old, it was an amazing opportunity to learn, and sadly, be a front-row witness to history at how just a handful of people can cause the downfall of tens and tens of thousands of hard-working humans, with lives in complete ruin and disarray. Just as so many lost their respective fortunes, so too did Ashmore.
As the old Texas adage says, he pulled himself up “by the bootstraps” and started again. While Ashmore lost financially, he gained invaluably and immeasurably – life-long lessons that have forever made an indelible imprint on how to morally conduct business – what the true meaning of ethics and values are, how people’s lives and decades and decades of hopes and dreams can be shattered in a heartbeat at the hands of greed and arrogance.
It was a front-row view that forever shaped who he is and how to build life-long businesses, relationships and reputations on firm bedrock. Ashmore went on to graduate school, earning his MBA with a focus in finance and real estate at Texas A&M University (whoop!) as a Ford Scholar.
He then went on to found a real estate investment company, turn around a struggling telecommunications company into one of the fastest growing small businesses, and help advise numerous mergers & acquisition transactions, selling small privately-held companies to some of the largest multi-national public companies. In today’s volatile energy environment, naysayers say one can’t build a profitable oil & gas company, especially the historically low-priced natural gas markets.
Subsequently, he co-founded what is now one of the fastest growing and most profitable oil & gas companies in Texas, drilling some of the most prolific and economic wells of the last several years. With a data-driven orientation and hyper focus on positive cash-flow, the small company has become one of the industry’s standard-bearers, by which others are now measured. Given this collective experience, the understanding of good management teams, profitable and defensible business opportunities and the exposure to deal flow, George Austin was founded to patiently, wisely and methodically take advantage of these alternative investment opportunities and to partner with sound and like-minded institutions and teams.
Again, welcome to George Austin. We invite you to reach out to us if there’s interest in investing in our private fund, or you have a compelling opportunity.
Fund Investment Objectives, Focus & Criteria: Objectives – The funds’ focus is to profitably grow market share, create new distribution channels, overall enterprise value and cash flow.
We seek to invest in highly profitable companies that have a unique marketplace position. As a result, George Austin does not impose any artificial exit time horizons and instead actively manages its investments as true partners alongside the company’s management and owners.
In this partnership, we work to maximize value and then strategically determine the best timing for exit. In some situations, these are quick ‘wins’, while some investments are more stable, cash-yielding asset classes. We seek high-growth companies with higher margins and opportunity to capture significant market share.
These companies may require longer-term holds with successive bolt-on acquisitions to consolidate its market share and maximize its enterprise value. We are not mandated by artificial pressures to divest companies when it does not make sense.
We work closely with our partners to provide timely capital, make strategic investments and patiently build value through our significant relational equity in these various industries. Our portfolio has multiple avenues of optionality: the optionality of stable, cash-flowing distribution, short-term ‘wins’ and longer-term holds to maximize shareholder return.
Typically, we do not invest in start-ups, unless it is a seasoned management team with a unique opportunity. With compelling start-up opportunities, we may place trusted advisors and temporary management to help ensure a stable, profitable launch.
Our fund’s focus is to deploy capital in existing companies that are experiencing positive cash-flow growth and need growth capital to expand its operations and/or make bolt-on acquisitions.
If you are an accredited investor and interested in learning more about the fund, our philosophy and criteria, please Contact Us
