Courtesy Tracy Britt Cool

Courtesy Tracy Britt Cool

Tracy Britt Cool (MBA 2009) has been playing the long game as long as she can remember. The former Berkshire Hathaway executive grew up in a family business: Her father was a third-generation farmer in Manhattan, Kansas, and she learned the basics working at his side. Farmers keep their eyes on the future, planning harvests years ahead. They know time and cultivation are required to grow and prosper.

Britt Cool now brings a similar vision to Kanbrick, the investment company that she cofounded after leaving Berkshire Hathaway in 2020. The firm specializes in building partnerships to help successful midsize and family-run businesses shape their legacies.

“In my mind, the world doesn’t need another middle-market private equity firm,” Britt Cool says. “Companies that endure the best in the long term—they’re building something different and special.”

Britt Cool’s plan to enter the investing world began as an undergrad at Harvard. She cofounded a women’s investing group on campus and visited Berkshire’s headquarters with the group. By the time she completed her MBA, she had encountered Berkshire CEO Warren Buffett three times, so she took a chance and sent him a letter asking for a job. It was 2009, and she was just 24, but she’d made an impression. Buffett hired her for the summer, then created a full-time position for her shortly thereafter.

While at Berkshire, Britt Cool was chair of Benjamin Moore and Oriental Trading Company; Buffett called her “the fireman” for her deft touch with struggling businesses. She also organized the firm’s first CEO gathering, which would become an annual conference that brings together dozens of Berkshire’s executives. Then, in 2014, Britt Cool became a CEO herself, at the Berkshire-backed Pampered Chef. It was an opportunity to “get out of the boardroom and into the real world,” she says, as well as another moment in which foresight served her well.

While at HBS, Britt Cool did a field study on the intersection of investing and operations. She came away with an important insight: Too few investors were operators, and vice versa. “There’s not often a lot of respect or a lot of switching of skills in that space,” she says. “And yet, you’ve seen the power of it in venture.” Startup founders routinely go into venture capital as investors, she notes. “But that doesn’t really happen at the midsize level or larger.”

Orchestrating a turnaround at Pampered Chef gave her valuable insights as an operator that eventually led her to launch Kanbrick: “I saw that most midsize companies struggle with the same things: How to build a strong team. How to hire the right people. How to build a strategy without McKinsey or Bain. And how do you execute that strategy and drive accountability into organizations?”

She and Pampered Chef CFO Brian Humphrey realized they’d found a sweet spot: They’d talked to dozens of executives who struggled with these issues. These were often family-led companies, with between $5 million and $50 million in operating profit, that were too small for the likes of a Berkshire Hathaway investment. The companies wanted to grow in an organic way without the pressure of private equity.

Britt Cool and Humphrey saw an opportunity to “help build companies for the long term, in the right way,” Britt Cool says. So they decided to launch Kanbrick—a portmanteau that recognizes their shared Kansas roots and a long-term, brick-by-brick mentality. “We think in decades, not quarters,” Britt Cool stresses. It’s a line she uses often enough that it could double as the Kanbrick motto.

Since launching Kanbrick, Britt Cool and Humphrey now talk to between 150 and 200 companies annually but make only one or two major investments a year. The pair focus on businesses in consumer, industrial, and business service verticals—and recently raised $220 million to invest, as reported in the Wall Street Journal. Kanbrick took a majority stake in the patented boat-covering system Marine Concepts and established a dealer network across the Southeast. Since acquiring JM Test Systems, a third-generation industrial equipment company out of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Kanbrick has helped it reach new markets and is now beginning to investigate acquisitions.

In another long play, Britt Cool launched an accelerator program, Build with Kanbrick, in 2021. Leaders of midsize companies can apply for the free three-month course to help them expand their businesses. So far, 30 executives have taken part in six cohorts.

Britt Cool knows that many midsize business owners may not be ready to sell their companies. In fact, she encourages them to retain ownership as long as they can. But she also knows that sowing a relationship now may lead to something in the long run.

“If what you’re focused on is maximizing short-term value, we tell a family or founder-owner, go hire a banker and sell to private equity. That will maximize your dollars today,” she says. “But if you really care about where your company ends up, if you care about who you partner with, if you care about your legacy and the impact on your employees, and you want to create long-term value, then think about us as a partner.”

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