VSS Capital Partners’ minority investment in Lane Four Consulting, announced Thursday, Oct. 31, reflects the firm’s predilection for backing founders.

“Andrew Sinclair bootstrapped Lane Four for several years, and it got to the point where he wanted to find a partner to support the company’s next stage of growth,” managing director Trent Hickman said of Lane Four’s founder, who’ll maintain a majority stake.

Lane Four consults and provides managed services to help companies get the most out of their Salesforce Inc. (CRM) systems. The parties didn’t disclose financial details. A source familiar with the matter, however, said the investment falls within the VSS’ typical range of $20 million to $50 million.

Lane Four is the second founder-run consultancy to partner with VSS, after the New York firm invested in San Francisco management consulting firm Treya Partners earlier in October.

As VSS and Sinclair grow Lane Four, the story could include consulting M&A and boosting marketing and sales efforts toward PE portfolio companies.

Platform at a glance:

• Workforce: approaching 100 employees
• Market reach: well over 100 customers
• Growth strategy: M&A, sign up more PE portfolio companies
• Valuation: within sponsor’s typical equity check range of $20 million to $50 million

Toronto-based Lane Four has a workforce approaching 100 employees and more than 100 customers, including venture investor Accel, AppFolio Inc. (APPF), Thoma Bravo LP portfolio company Anaplan Inc. and Bill Holdings Inc. (BILL).

Add-on acquisitions in the Salesforce ecosystem and adjacent areas are one path to growth.

“I’d describe them more as targeted bolt-on deals, rather than larger-scale M&A deals,” Hickman said.

A significant majority of Lane Four’s clients use Oracle Corp.’s (ORCL) NetSuite enterprise resource planning software. NetSuite consultants could be a good fit.

“Historically, it has been a pain point for companies to properly integrate their Salesforce and their NetSuite instances, because by and large you have Salesforce consultants and you have NetSuite consultants, but they don’t really get to know each other,” Hickman said. “Having this expertise on both sides, and the connective tissue between the two, is the real opportunity.”

Increasing the focus on PE portfolio companies is another growth opportunity.

“The company’s power alley is really with late stage VC to growth equity-backed technology companies, a company that has raised $50 million or $100 million for their Series C round or did a big growth equity round,” he said.

“They have really only scratched the surface of what they could do at the private equity level,” he said.

Lane Four’s model is a combination of consulting, which is more project-oriented and makes up roughly a third of the business, and managed services, which account for about two-thirds of the business and are more recurring.

Salesforce is much more highly configurable than an application like, say, Microsoft Word, presenting opportunities for consulting and managed services.

“There are a lot of customizations and enhancements that you can make to fit your company’s workflows,” Hickman said. “Higher growth companies in particular are constantly adjusting, maintaining and improving it.”

Lane Four provides the service on a recurring basis.

Meanwhile, helping companies improve their data fidelity is an emerging opportunity, Hickman said.

Sales people may enter incomplete call notes into Salesforce. Some may have different views on the probability of closing a deal. A conservative employee might assign a 50% likelihood, while a more aggressive peer might say 90%.

“How do you get people on the same page so that a chief revenue officer or a chief financial officer can get a really accurate picture of what the next few months are going to look like?” Hickman said.