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Arcbright Partners is a SF initiative led by Melissa Sariffodeen focused on acquiring and growing a small or medium-sized enterprise in Canada through a disciplined, long-term ownership model. Melissa is excited to roll up her sleeves and take on the CEO role. She has built teams, launched products, and managed through growth and change, and understands first-hand what makes a business thrive day to day and how to help it grow. The initiative has attracted the backing of a group of experienced investors, including TTCER, The Operand Group, Pacific Lake, Gestalt Capital, Trilogy Search Partners, BDC (Thrive ETA), Village Search Partners, Calusa Capital, Mineola Search Partners, Sidney Sommer, Justine Janssen, Boris Wertz, and Blake Bracalenti.
Melissa is a serial entrepreneur, operator, and advisor with extensive experience building and scaling mission-driven organizations. She began her career in finance and early operational roles at Deloitte, RBC, Canadian Tire, and Freshii, where she worked closely with founders on franchise development and digital innovation. She later co-founded HackerYou (later Juno College of Technology), a pioneering programming bootcamp that she scaled and successfully exited after helping over 10,000 students transition into tech careers. She then founded Canada Learning Code, which she led as Co-Founder & CEO from a grassroots initiative into a national education organization with over $10M in annual operating budget, more than $50M raised, and operations across 45+ chapters before its acquisition in 2025. She taught herself to code at 11, holds an HBA from the Ivey Business School and a Master’s from the University of Toronto. She is an award-winning entrepreneur, recognized as one of Canada’s Top 40 Under 40 and RBC Entrepreneur of the Year.
She is seeking to acquire a human-centric, service-based business in Canada operating in industries such as workforce training, education, healthcare, or essential services, where demand is stable, regulatory risk is low, and long-term growth prospects are clear. The target company should have recurring, repeat or contractual revenues, a diverse and loyal customer base, strong middle management, and simple or replicable operations with low capital intensity. Financially, Arcbright is focused on established businesses with at least $10M in annual revenue (or $3M+ ARR for software companies), $2M+ in EBITDA, EBITDA margins above 15%, and a proven track record of stable and consistent cash flows.
