Shawnee founded Capital Row and leads its healthcare desks. She is an M&A advisor and a healthcare operator. She helped scale a private equity-backed healthcare platform from roughly 6,000 to 22,000 employees and built the post-close integration model for Keck Medicine of USC across more than 45 clinics. That work put her on the customer side of healthcare software, among the providers whose billing, scheduling and records systems a buyer is paying for. Her transaction experience covers behavioral health, home health, hospice and physician services, and her career includes academic medicine and private equity-backed healthcare systems.
About Capital Row
The vertical, already known.
Capital Row is the M&A firm for software the working economy cannot switch off. We work one vertical at a time, from the first buyer conversation to the close, for buyers and for owners, and on one side of each deal.
Buyers see more of their own market. Owners learn what a buyer will find in their numbers while there is still time to change it. Sellers meet buyers selected for their track record and culture.
12 industries
66 sectors
6 desks open
Buyers · Sellers
One firm, three ways to work with us.
The same sector intelligence sits behind all three. What changes is which side of the table you are on.
BuyersFor acquirers
We map a sector, keep your criteria on file and bring you the companies that fit, with the numbers traced to source before the letter of intent. We work with holding companies, family offices, private equity platforms, strategic acquirers, independent sponsors and lenders.
Before a saleFor established companies
We read your company the way a buyer's diligence team will: what it is worth, what AI could do to it, and whether it runs without you. Then we set out what to fix first and who does each part.
The saleFor owners selling
Sell-side representation and sell-side diligence for vertical software, services and hybrid companies, with buyers selected for their track record and culture.
Vertical software, by the numbers
The market is busy. Most of it goes unseen.
2,784SaaS M&A transactions
12 months through Q2 2026
12 months through Q2 2026
54%Vertical software share
of SaaS M&A, Q2 2026
of SaaS M&A, Q2 2026
18.4%Share of its own stated market
the median private equity firm sees
the median private equity firm sees
Volume isn’t the problem. Intelligence is.
Sources: Software Equity Group, 2Q26 SaaS M&A and Public Market Report (transactions and vertical share). SPS / With Intelligence, Deal Origination Benchmark Report, LTM to June 30, 2025 (coverage, measured across 177 private equity firms).
Our process
Intelligence first, on every mandate.
Every engagement runs the same way. The intelligence comes before the introduction.
Row 1Sector intelligence
The sector is mapped before anyone goes to market: the companies in it, the buyers active in it, and where its deals break.
Row 2Criteria
What a buyer buys, in writing: sector, size and structure. Kept on file and confirmed each quarter.
Row 3Select
Each opportunity is set against the criteria on file. A buyer hears about the ones that fit.
Row 4Evidence
Before a letter of intent, the numbers are traced to source documents and every adjustment is marked supported or unsupported.
Row 5Transaction
Capital Row acts for one side of the transaction, under a scope agreed in writing.
Quality of earnings
The numbers, traced before the letter of intent.
For a buyer, buy-side diligence traces a target's reported earnings to source documents and marks each adjustment supported or unsupported before the letter of intent, so diligence starts from evidence and not from a pitch.
For an owner, sell-side diligence puts the same evidence on the owner's side of the table, prepared with the independent firms we partner with, before any buyer reads the numbers.
Ask about sell-side diligenceCollaborative deal team.
Operators, clinicians and transaction advisors, working together on each engagement. Tap or click a card to read the bio.
Dennis Nelson directs operations at Capital Row and will lead its transportation and logistics desk when it opens.
Ashley Benjamin, MD
Director of Psychiatry Implementation
Dr. Benjamin is a psychiatrist and clinical leader with more than two decades in mental health treatment, clinician training, and program development. He served 21 years in the U.S. Air Force, including as Medical and Administrative Director of the Tinker Air Force Base Substance Abuse Program, and has held leadership roles at Ventura County Behavioral Health and the Oklahoma City VA. He specializes in psychiatric collaboration, trauma-informed care, and high-acuity conditions, and has published more than 30 research articles and books.
Dan is a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist with more than 45 years in behavioral health program development and clinician training. He founded Praxes Behavioral Health, has launched more than 250 behavioral health programs, and has trained more than 5,000 professionals. He led a Long Beach outpatient agency’s growth from 11 to 75 employees and from $2 million to $7 million in revenue, and helps organizations secure funding for program growth.
Lily Cervantes holds the Professional in Human Resources (PHR) credential and is a labor relations specialist who has spent her career where workforce risk is highest: large, unionized California organizations. At CAL FIRE, she owned the department’s Strike Contingency Plan, oversaw Reasonable Suspicion and Substance Abuse training, and through her labor relations staff gave regional leadership a quarterly view of arbitration, unfair labor practice hearing, and settlement costs. At CAL FIRE and Disney, she led quarterly union and labor relations meetings that worked through open grievances and cut their number, and she helped reduce unfair labor practice filings. Across the California Departments of Water Resources, Parks and Recreation, and Corrections and Rehabilitation, she advised on grievance resolution, workforce planning, and leave and out-of-class assignment policy, and served on a Return to Work Committee with HR and legal staff. At Capital Row and Behavioral Blueprints, Lily helps owners and buyers recruit and keep key teams, surface labor and employment risk in diligence, and prepare for labor contract negotiations, so the people who create the value stay in place through a transaction.
Tell us what you are working on.
Name the vertical and where you need clarity. A person reads it.