Millions of US small business owners are retiring with no succession plan, part of the Great Ownership Transfer. Could this be an opportunity to move towards employee ownership at scale? Teamshares is one live attempt: since 2019 it has bought more than 90 businesses from retiring owners, aiming to move each toward majority employee ownership, with a stated vision of holding stakes in thousands more. In June 2026, Teamshares itself listed on Nasdaq.
Michael Brown, Alex Eu and Kevin Shiiba met as investment bankers at Perella Weinberg Partners. In 2013, Brown and Eu left banking to buy and run six small businesses themselves, learning the operator's side of a trade they had advised on before. A conversation with one of their customers introduced them to employee stock ownership, and they saw its effect on how staff worked. In 2019, the three co-founded Teamshares in New York, aiming to address two problems together: roughly 70% of small businesses fail to find a buyer when their owner retires, and business wealth in the US remains highly concentrated.
Teamshares buys businesses with $0.5–5 million of EBITDA from retiring owners, at close to market price. On the day of acquisition, 10% of the company's stock is carved out to employees, including an incoming president that Teamshares recruits and trains itself, often people with a background in the military or another field requiring direct leadership through change. Teamshares says presidents need real empathy alongside a willingness to make hard calls, including on workplace conduct.
- A day-one stock carve-out: 10% to employees; working towards 80% employee ownership within 20 years.
- A commitment to hold every company permanently.
- $120 million equity investment from T. Rowe Price’ earlier venture capital funding from Khosla Ventures, QED, Union Square Ventures; debt capital from a variety of partners.
- International expansion into Japan, Canada and Switzerland, with the US remaining Teamshares' main market.
By early 2026, Teamshares had grown to more than 90 companies across more than 40 industries and 30 US states, with consolidated revenue of $490 million, against a stated addressable market of 4.5 million US businesses currently owned by Baby Boomer and Gen X owners. Going public had been part of the plan from early on. Teamshares merged with Live Oak Acquisition Corp V, a SPAC, in a deal announced in November 2025. T. Rowe Price Investment Management anchored a $126.5 million share purchase, and Teamshares began trading on Nasdaq as TMS on 23 June 2026.
When Teamshares takes over a business, many employees have never heard of employee ownership before and are sometimes sceptical of a new owner's promises. Trust builds over years, not months, as staff see dividends, stock updates and a genuine say in day-to-day decisions.
The early relationship between Teamshares and a newly acquired company is a learning process. Some of the culture shift is difficult: professionalising a small business's financial management and governance can surface workplace problems that had gone unaddressed for years, which then need direct intervention.
Teamshares' ownership operates at two different levels. Its operating subsidiaries are moving toward majority employee ownership, a genuine transfer of equity to the people doing the work. Teamshares itself, the holding company, was built on conventional venture capital and is now a public company answerable to Nasdaq shareholders. Private equity usually buys, builds and resells; Teamshares commits to holding businesses permanently while employees earn a larger share over time.
Zoom out, and this is a live test of whether alternative ownership can convert businesses at the scale the Great Ownership Transfer demands. Would this model or a model like it transfer to the UK? Over a million UK business owners are heading toward retirement with no succession plan in place, a similar scale of opportunity to the one Teamshares is chasing in the US. The UK already has its own route in Employee Ownership Trusts, tax-incentivised since 2014, targeting 7,500 to 10,000 employee-owned businesses within five years but so far not on track for that target. Teamshares is an exciting business to watch.