Stone-Goff Portfolio Company Spotlight Acquires Captivate Collective

BOSTON & NEW YORK–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Stone-Goff Partners (“Stone-Goff”), a lower middle market private equity firm focused on business-to-business services companies in the knowledge economy, today announced that Spotlight AR, LLC (“Spotlight”), a portfolio company of Stone-Goff, has acquired Captivate Collective (“Captivate”), a market-leading customer marketing and advocacy consultancy.

The acquisition marks Spotlight’s first strategic add-on investment and advances the company’s long-term strategy to expand its capabilities for B2B organizations navigating an increasingly complex buyer journey. Together, Spotlight and Captivate create the market’s first end-to-end Influence Orchestration capability, uniting analyst relations, customer advocacy, and emerging AI-driven discovery into a single, cohesive platform.

“Spotlight has a clear vision for the importance of influence in B2B and Captivate Collective enhances that vision with differentiated capabilities and leadership,” said Hannah Stone Craven, Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Stone-Goff Partners. “Together, they reflect how influence is driving decision-making among B2B buyers today.”

For the past 14 years, Spotlight has pioneered the analyst relations category, helping the world’s most ambitious B2B companies engage, manage, and measure analyst influence. Spotlight already delivers customer influence services, including peer review sourcing and win/loss research. Captivate Collective brings deep expertise in customer marketing and advocacy, adding proven programs that activate customers as credible, scalable sources of influence throughout the buyer journey.

“This acquisition is about more than expanding services—it’s about building the future of influence in B2B,” said Rick Nash, CEO and co-founder of Spotlight. “Buyers don’t experience analyst insight, customer advocacy, and peer validation as separate motions, and neither should the companies trying to reach them. Captivate Collective has built one of the most respected customer advocacy practices in the market.”

Following the acquisition, Captivate Collective will continue to operate with its existing leadership team. Clients will gain access to an expanded set of capabilities across analyst relations, customer advocacy, and influence measurement. Spotlight plans to continue investing in innovation, talent, and technology to advance the Influence Orchestration category globally.

About Spotlight

Based in Kansas City, MO, Spotlight is an insights-driven analyst relations (AR) and influence orchestration firm with more than a decade of experience helping fast-growing companies (from start-ups to large Fortune 500 organizations) scale and accelerate their AR and peer review programs to maximize what clients earn from the channel. Spotlight is also consistently recognized as a Best Place to Work by the Kansas City Business Journal. For more information, visit www.spotlightar.com.

About Stone-Goff Partners

Stone-Goff Partners is a lower middle market private equity firm investing in technology-driven business-to-business service companies. Our companies combine service offerings with technology, focus on clearly defined end markets, and are active participants in the growing knowledge economy. Core verticals include business services, consulting services, marketing services, IT services, human capital and training, and outsourced services. We partner with company founders and executive leadership teams to provide capital, M&A origination and execution, and value-creation expertise to our portfolio companies. Since the firm’s founding in 2010, Stone-Goff’s sector knowledge and deal experience has helped drive successful outcomes for company founders, limited partners, and portfolio management teams. For more information, please visit stonegoff.com.

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Contacts

Jeremy Milner
Gregory
[email protected]
(401) 862-9422