An investor who became an operator, building Germany’s answer to Constellation.
The transformation
Chapters Group started as Medical Columbus, a software company founded near Frankfurt in 1998 to digitise procurement in German hospitals. Twenty years later, in 2018, they sold the core business to a strategic buyer consolidating that market.
Most founders would retire or start fresh. Jan-Hendrik Mohr did something different. He took the remaining capital and structure and transformed Chapters into a holding company — a vehicle for acquiring niche software businesses across Europe.
Mohr had run JMX Capital, an equity fund, before joining Chapters. He understood compounding from the investor’s side. Now he wanted to compound from the operator’s side, with permanent capital and no exit clock.
Five years later, Chapters owns 55+ operating companies across nine countries, with a market capitalisation exceeding €1 billion. Revenue grew from essentially zero to €119 million in 2024. The German answer to Constellation is being written.
The German opportunity
Germany presents a structural opportunity that doesn’t exist elsewhere. Europe’s largest economy has millions of small and medium-sized enterprises, many founder-led, many approaching succession.
The numbers are staggering: over 190,000 business successions expected in Germany alone. Founders built valuable companies but have no obvious successors. Private equity offers exit, but founders often care about legacy — about employees, customers, and the communities they serve.
Chapters positions as the permanent alternative. They promise what PE cannot: we will never sell your business. For founders who spent decades building something, that promise matters.
The competition is real. Constellation’s Volaris operating group, Valsoft, and Hawk Infinity all hunt in Europe. But Chapters has local advantages: German-speaking team, Frankfurt headquarters, understanding of Mittelstand culture. The relationships that unlock deals often require native context.
The search fund hybrid
Most serial acquirers run M&A from headquarters. Chapters does something unusual: they build platforms and let the platforms acquire.
The model borrows from search funds. Chapters recruits a two or three-person founding team, gives them a 20% stake in a new platform, and provides access to preferred equity. The platform team then sources, executes, and operates acquisitions in their domain.
The structure solves a scaling problem. Headquarters can only evaluate so many deals. By pushing M&A down to platforms, Chapters multiplies its acquisition capacity without multiplying its headcount. Each platform develops domain expertise that improves deal selection.
Four platforms now operate within Chapters, focused on different verticals: critical infrastructure, professional services, healthcare IT, and others. The platforms acquired stakes in 18 companies in 2023 alone.
The backers
Chapters’ shareholder register reads like a who’s who of compounders.
Mitch Rales, co-founder of Danaher, owns 14.4%. He built the template for operational excellence through acquisition; now he’s backing the next generation attempting it in Europe.
Antheia, the family office of Spotify founder Daniel Ek, holds 10.9%. The MIT endowment and Sator Grove round out the institutional base.
These aren’t passive investors seeking dividends. They’re operators and allocators who’ve seen compounding work at scale. Their presence signals confidence in the model and provides patient capital that matches the permanent ownership promise.
The Manuscript Method
Chapters developed a codified operating system they call the “Manuscript Method” — their equivalent of Danaher’s DBS or Roper’s toolkit.
The details remain proprietary, but the function is clear: operational best practices that transfer across portfolio companies. Unlike Danaher’s heavy transformation approach, Chapters leaves subsidiaries largely autonomous. The Manuscript Method provides frameworks and benchmarks without imposing centralised control.
The decentralisation is genuine. Platforms run their own M&A. Operating companies retain their management and culture. Headquarters focuses on capital allocation, governance, and investor relations. The organisation structure mirrors what works at Constellation — central standards, distributed execution.
The layer cake
Chapters’ capital structure is more complex than traditional serial acquirers. They blend TopCo equity and unsecured debt across multiple layers, creating what analysts call a “layer cake.”
The complexity serves a purpose. Different capital sources match different risk profiles. Platform equity aligns founders with long-term value creation. Debt provides leverage without dilution. The structure enables aggressive acquisition pace while preserving upside for equity holders.
But the risk is equally clear. Complex structures require careful management. The net loss widened in 2024 despite strong revenue growth — a reminder that growth has costs, and the model isn’t yet proven through a full cycle.
Early innings
Chapters is young. The holding company model launched in 2018; meaningful scale arrived only in 2023-2024. Revenue grew 68% in 2024 to €119 million. The trajectory is impressive, but the sample size is small.
The real tests lie ahead. How does the model perform when good deals become scarce? When competition intensifies? When economic stress reveals which acquisitions were sound and which were optimistic? Constellation faced these tests over 25 years. Chapters hasn’t yet faced its equivalent trials.
What’s clear: the German opportunity is real, the model is coherent, and the backers are credible. Mohr built something that could compound for decades — if the execution matches the ambition.
Connects to Library: Process Power · Optionality
See also: The Constellation Model — The template Chapters explicitly emulates: decentralised capital allocation, permanent ownership, small deals at scale. The Topicus Transplant — Another European experiment testing whether North American playbooks export. The Bergman & Beving Legacy — European precedent for spawning multiple compounders from a single source.