A fund for a kind of company that has never had one.
Capital for operators who intend to keep their company.
You have twenty years in your field and the relationships to match. AI now lets you build what used to take a team. Enroot puts capital in the ground under you — and the deal ends with you owning all of it.
Enroot is not venture capital. We don't need your company to become enormous. We need it to become profitable, and we're paid from those profits — not from selling you.
How the capital works
Capital goes in below ground, the company grows above it, and ownership comes back to you. Four hundred thousand dollars in two stages, paid back from profits once you're making them, with a fixed-price path to full ownership.
- $150K plantedDay one.
- $250K at the milestoneReleased against traction you agreed to at signing, around month twelve.
- ProfitableA share of profits repays the capital. Nothing is owed before this.
- Capital returnedPayback ends; a 20% trailing profit share begins.
- You buy us outFixed formula, your timing. The company is 100% yours.
The second tranche is released against milestones you agree to at signing — not a board's mood a year later.
Enroot takes a minority stake at full deployment. You keep control, majority ownership, and every decision about how to run the company.
Once you cross a profitability threshold — after paying yourself a real salary — a share of profits repays the capital. Nothing is owed before then.
After the capital is repaid, Enroot's return is a trailing share of profits. We make money when you do, for as long as we're partners.
After payback, you can repurchase Enroot's stake at a price set by formula on the day you sign. No negotiation, no permission.
If you decide to sell the company, Enroot takes its 15% and the profit share ends. Selling is your option — never our requirement.
Who we back
Enroot backs operators, not ideas. The founders we fund are mid-career experts building businesses in the industries they already know — typically reaching one to two million dollars in annual profit without hiring a team.
We publish our screen because we want you to apply against it. A strong application answers all six.
- You can name the dollar amount your customers are losing.
Revenue leaking from an existing workflow, or expensive labor doing work AI can now do. "Practices lose about $X a year to unworked recalls" is the shape of a good answer.
- Your network is your distribution.
Your first customers are people who already trust you professionally. You sell on relationships you've spent decades building, not on ad spend.
- Your market is fragmented.
Thousands of independent practices, agencies, contractors, or firms — too small for enterprise vendors and too specific for generic software.
- The work is messy.
Regulated data, unstructured documents, legacy systems, PDFs and faxes — the kind of work horizontal AI tools won't absorb, which is exactly why it stays yours.
- The revenue recurs.
A managed service or retainer that earns ten to forty thousand dollars a year per customer, so the math works at forty to a hundred customers rather than four hundred.
- It can run without you someday.
A documented playbook and a repeatable pipeline. You may never sell — but a company that could be sold is worth more to you either way.
What you get beyond the capital
Fifty operators running the same playbook are each other's best resource. Enroot negotiates as a group and passes the terms through at cost.
Enterprise AI at group rates
Fund-negotiated agreements with the major model providers, with the security and admin features solo operators can't usually access. You pay the vendor directly at the cohort price.
Health coverage for your family
From day one, your company reimburses your family's health plan tax-free through a fund-negotiated arrangement we set up for you. When you make your first hire, you move to large-group coverage through our negotiated PEO tier.
Compliance and legal, ready to use
SOC 2 tooling, business associate agreements, customer contracts, and the standard documents your buyers will ask for — templates that have already been through review.
One bookkeeping stack
Every Enroot company runs the same books. Your quarterly reporting to us takes under thirty minutes, and the benchmarks that come back are ones no one else has.
A cohort that has solved your problem
Every playbook, vendor term, and hard-won answer from across the portfolio is searchable. When you hit a wall, the odds are good another founder already got through it.
Us, when it counts
We don't take a board seat and we won't run your company. We show up in person for the moments that matter — the first big customer, the milestone, the hard quarter.
How applying works
The application is built around the six criteria above. Answer them plainly and specifically — we read for the dollar amounts and the names, not the adjectives.
- Apply online
A structured application, not an essay. Expect it to take about an hour if you know your market.
- A working conversation
We'll spend an hour on your first ten customers and the leak you're fixing. Bring the numbers you'd bring to a customer.
- In person
Before any term sheet, we meet face to face. Conviction in a person doesn't transmit over video.
- Terms and first capital
One standard agreement, the same for every founder. You'll know the milestone for the second tranche before you sign.
- The milestone, around month twelve
Judged against what we agreed, on the evidence you report. Passing releases the $250K. Choosing not to continue is yours to make.
Why Enroot exists
Enroot Capital was started by Brian Ru. He spent three years at General Catalyst, where he led or supported more than fifty investments and helped deploy most of a billion dollars, concentrated in healthcare. He then co-founded a venture-backed healthcare company, raised $22 million, and acquired and operated a Medicaid clinic inside it — and learned from the inside how the venture instrument pushes companies away from patient, profitable building. Most recently he ran finance for a company he helped take from negative gross margin to over forty percent.
He grew up inside the kind of company Enroot backs: his parents ran a small business out of their home, and from the age of eight he answered their customer calls. That business fed a family and was invisible to every form of capital that existed. AI is what lets the next generation of operators build the same company with leverage they never had. Enroot is the first instrument designed to own a piece of it — and to hand that piece back.
On the name: Brian's surname, Ru (茹), appears in a line from the I Ching about roots that rise together. To enroot is to plant something so it takes hold. That is what this capital is for.
Questions founders ask
Why a profit share instead of a normal equity deal?
Because an equity-only investor is paid only if you sell, so an equity-only investor eventually wants you to sell. A profit share means Enroot is paid while you own and run the company. Our incentive is your profitability, which is also your incentive.
What if I never want to sell or buy you out?
Then you keep running the company and paying the trailing share, and we keep being a minority partner. There is no clock. The buyback exists so that you have a way out on your terms — not so that we can force one.
How is "profit" defined? I don't want to be arguing about it.
Neither do we. Distributable profit is calculated by a fixed definition in the agreement, on the standard books every Enroot company keeps, after a salary allowance for you that's set at signing. The number is computed, not negotiated.
What happens if I miss the milestone?
The second tranche isn't released, and your obligations stay proportional to the capital you actually received. Some founders decide the first $150K was enough. Missing a milestone doesn't put you in default; it just means we stop here.
Do I need a technical co-founder?
No. Enroot is built on the premise that you don't. The operators we back build with AI and a small number of contractors, and the cohort's shared tools and playbooks are designed to make that realistic.
Will Enroot be on my board?
No. We hold information rights and a short list of consent rights — new debt, related-party deals, salary above the allowance. Everything else is yours.
Build the company you'd actually want to own.
Applications for the first Enroot cohort are open. If you have the expertise, the relationships, and the leak you know how to fix, we'd like to read your answers.