Third Place Ventures | US based
We believe in third places.
We buy into community and sport assets. The clubs, gyms, pools, and small businesses where people show up for each other.
Southeast & Sun Belt
Location target
Under $1M
EBITDA target
Deal by deal
How we raise
Buy and hold
We're with you forever
The thesis
Founder-led community businesses are running out of runway, and the people who built them deserve a way to keep them open.
Succession, lease risk, and undercapitalization are killing off the neighborhood swim club, the boxing gym, the summer league, the rec-league field house. Operators want more compensation, better administration, real technology, and fewer board and landlord constraints. Owners want a dignified exit. In a niche this small, there are very few natural buyers.
Third Place Ventures is an asset-light acquisition and operating platform for exactly those assets. We are buying good small businesses in sport and community, one at a time, and running them with full time focus and care, with capital raised deal by deal so every investor sees the specific business they are backing.
Why it matters
Third places are the only rooms where a town actually meets itself.
Sociologist Ray Oldenburg named them: third places are neither home nor work. They're neutral ground, they level rank, conversation is the main activity, and there are regulars. In America, most of what's left of that lives inside sport: the pool, the mat, the court, the dugout, the lobby with the vending machine.
When one closes, nothing replaces it. That's the asset class we're buying.
Read the full caseWhere to start
Third place
Not home, not work. The pool deck, the gym, the rink lobby, the field house. These are the places that make a neighborhood a neighborhood.
02What we do
We take on the admin, billing, hiring, and lease risk, fund the repairs, and let operators go back to doing the thing they are good at.
03Deal structures
Earn-ins, earn-outs, seller financing, staged buyouts, delayed SBA refi. Whatever actually fits the business and the family behind it.
04Who I am
Nils Bognar. Second oldest of five siblings, all swimmers. A lifelong part of sports and learning communities across the Southeast, and the person you'll be talking to.
If you own one of these places, or you want to own a piece of one, let's talk.
Sellers, coaches, operators, and investors all start the same way: a conversation about one specific business.
Contact Third Place Ventures