The Mad River Associates team is comprised of experienced and successful professionals who average more than 20 years of in-depth experience. Our successful results are largely due to the synergies we capture having such high quality professionals working together on our clients' behalf.

Bob Sahlman
Founder

Managing Partner

email

John Freyhof
Partner

email

Jay Carpenter
Partner
email

Hank Firey
Partner

email

Bob Sahlman is President and Founder of Mad River Associates.   Prior to 1998, Mr. Sahlman managed a team of seventeen professionals for Coldstream Real Estate Advisors, a commercial real estate brokerage firm in Bedford, New Hampshire. After retiring from that business in 1993, he went on to manage real estate investment entities in New England. After successfully selling the Sahlman family's rural telephone business, Topsham Telephone Company in 1998, Mr. Sahlman joined a thirty-year old main street brokerage firm called Country Business. The primary objective of joining Country Business was to find a manufacturing investment opportunity for the Sahlman family interests. After locating a suitable opportunity, Mr. Sahlman left Country Business in late 1998 to start Mad River Associates.   He has a B. S. in finance from George Washington University with three years of additional graduate studies in real estate and urban development at American University.

John Freyhof has over fifteen years of direct investment and advisory experience and joined Mad River Associates as a Managing Director in June 2003. Prior to joining Mad River Associates, Mr. Freyhof co-founded TRF Urban Growth Partners, a $50 million fund specializing in socially responsible investments in middle-market manufacturing and service businesses.   Mr. Freyhof has been involved in assisting companies with fundraising, business plan development, strategic marketing and new product development as an advisor, board member and investor. From 1997 - 2003, Mr. Freyhof was responsible for originating and managing investments in a portfolio of fifteen technology, manufacturing, software and service companies as a Managing Director at PNC Capital Markets and TRF Urban Growth Partners. From 1987 - 1997, he served as an advisor to nearly 300 early stage technology companies who subsequently went on to raise over $500 million while serving as Director of Venture Development at a Carnegie Mellon University spin off called the Enterprise Corporation of Pittsburgh. Mr. Freyhof holds a BS in accounting, cum laude, from Syracuse University and an MBA from the Graduate School of Business at the University of Pittsburgh. He is also a registered investment representative.  Mr. Freyhof manages the Mad River Associates Philadelphia office.

Jay started his career working for a computer engineering company based in Sydney, Australia, called Platypus Technologies.  After working as a manufacturing engineer and sales engineer for Platypus he left to develop a new product line for Gordon Cross Inc.  Jay developed relationships with manufacturing facilities in southern China, as well as established distribution channels throughout North America.  Jay also has extensive experience in the construction industry having worked as a construction project manager and structural engineer earlier in his career. He joined MRA’s Waitsfield office in 2009, to help grow the business and develop systems to improve the companies efficiency.  Jay has an MBA degree from Babson College, and a B.S. Mechanical Engineering, from The University of Vermont.

Hank joined Mad River Associates (MRA) in 2010, bringing a diverse background in telecommunications, software, finance, and mergers and acquistions. He went to school at University of Maryland College Park.  He began his career as a software developer, then moved on to a successful decade in sales and sales management. He was then recruited to a publicly-held software company as Sr. VP, was a key member of the leadership team to take the company private and sell to a PE firm. Then joining a Fortune-1000 technology company as VP and GM, Americas, he participated in an LBO, the acquisition of another publicly-held company, and as division executive acquired several private medical and financial software/services companies to reinforce product lines.

Struck with the entrepreneurial urge, Hank left to acquire a small computer products distribution/integration company. When the business was sold, he moved from board member to CEO of a troubled venture-backed software company offering applications to nonprofit organizations. The company migrated into audience management, e-training, and e-commerce, and was merged into a PE-led roll-up for a planned IPO.  Hank then became CEO of a PE-backed distressed software company serving softgoods manufacturers and retailers, grew revenue and restructured, then merged it into a rollup. In the 5 years immediately prior to MRA, Hank was CEO of two venture-backed telecommunications software companies, one selling Voice over IP products to major corporations and worldwide "next-generation" carriers, the other selling network capacity planning software to major carriers.