Genstar Capital, a private equity firm focused on middle-market companies, has made a growth investment in Lightspeed Systems, a provider of classroom management tools.
Lightspeed offers a cloud-based platform to enable educators to teach, with more than 20 million users from 32,000 schools.This investment will help to drive continued product innovation and position Lightspeed to accelerate its mission of keeping students safe and enabling effective learning.
“Lightspeed is well-positioned to help educators and administrators make sense of the immense data on student online activity,” commented Lightspeed Systems’ president Brian Thomas. ”With the backing of both Genstar and MDP, we will continue our mission of advancing safety and educational effectiveness.”
William Blair & Co. served as Lightspeed’s financial advisor and Kirkland & Ellis provided legal counsel. Ropes & Gray LLP served as legal counsel to Genstar. MDP‘s capital markets group has arranged for committed financing from a group of private lenders to support the transaction.