Tarrus Richardson

Founder and CEO IMB Partners

Last Reviewed: September 19, 2026

Executive Summary

Tarrus Richardson is the founder and chief executive of IMB Partners, a Bethesda, Maryland private equity firm that buys and builds lower middle-market companies selling into two customer bases that do not go away: electric utilities and government agencies. He started it in 2010 after twelve years co-founding and running ICV Partners, and for the firm’s first decade he did something unusual — eight platform investments financed deal by deal, as an independent sponsor, without a fund behind him. That changed at the end of 2024, when IMB closed its inaugural institutional vehicle, SBIC Fund I, at $125.5 million against a $100 million target, backed by around a hundred institutions. Across his career he has invested more than $500 million and completed over twenty platform buyouts and add-on acquisitions. Alongside the investing he founded the Council of Urban Professionals and was founding board chair of All Star Code.

Career Highlights

• Founded IMB Partners in 2010; the firm targets platform companies with $10-100 million in revenue serving government agencies and utilities.
• Has invested over $500 million of capital and completed more than 20 platform buyouts and add-on acquisitions across 25 years in private equity.
• Executed eight platform investments as an independent sponsor, raising capital on a deal-by-deal basis rather than from a committed fund.
• Won SBA approval in October 2023 for IMB to operate as a Small Business Investment Company, and closed SBIC Fund I on 31 December 2024 with $125.5 million committed — 25 percent above target — from roughly 100 investors spanning banks, pension funds, insurance companies, foundations and endowments.
• Co-founded ICV Partners, a $440 million minority-owned private equity firm, and worked there from 1998 to 2010.
• Served as a director of Mirror Digital Inc., named as such in the company’s 2013 Form D filing with the SEC.
• Founder of the Council of Urban Professionals and founding board chair of All Star Code.
• Robert Toigo Fellow at Harvard Business School; at Purdue he was Student Body President, and later served as Purdue Black Alumni President.

Professional Journey

Richardson took a BS in Accounting at Purdue, where he was elected Student Body President, and an MBA at Harvard Business School as a Robert Toigo Fellow — the fellowship established specifically to widen access to careers in finance. His early working years were spent at Citibank, which had by then absorbed Salomon Brothers, and at JLL Partners, a private equity firm managing over $2 billion.

In 1998 he co-founded ICV Partners, a minority-owned private equity firm that grew to $440 million, and stayed twelve years. That experience — institutional, fund-based, minority-owned by design — is the direct antecedent of what he built next, but IMB was structured differently on purpose.

He founded IMB Partners in 2010 and chose the independent sponsor route: identify a company, then raise the equity for that specific deal. It is a harder way to operate, because every transaction requires its own fundraise and there is no management fee underwriting the search. What it buys is discipline and freedom from a deployment clock. Over the following decade IMB completed eight platform investments this way — Richmond Wholesale, Alder Foods and Elite Brands, now held jointly as Pro Food Solutions; e&e IT Consulting; Ashburn Consulting; Carr & Duff; Farwest Corrosion Control Company; and LaFata Contract Services, exited in August 2022 — concentrating on companies supplying utilities, infrastructure services and government contracts.

The institutional step came next. The SBA approved IMB to operate an SBIC in October 2023, and SBIC Fund I closed on the last day of 2024 at $125.5 million, a quarter above its target, with about a hundred investors. “Our first dedicated fund will allow IMB to continue its mission to support companies in the government contracting and utilities & infrastructure services sectors,” Richardson said when the close was announced in February 2025. “We look forward to providing growth opportunities to lower middle market businesses that may otherwise lack access to essential capital.” The firm has stayed active since: a $130 million dividend recapitalisation of its three food companies in July 2024, a single-asset continuation vehicle for e&e IT Consulting closed in October 2025, and in July 2026 the acquisition of Strategic Land Services, a Georgia heavy civil contractor doing the site preparation work behind electric grid expansion.

Outside the firm, Richardson founded the Council of Urban Professionals, a leadership development and networking organisation with chapters in New York and Los Angeles, and was founding board chair of All Star Code, which teaches computer science to boys of colour. Both address the same bottleneck his own career ran through — access to the networks and credentials that finance and technology quietly require.

Education

Purdue University

Bachelor of Science, Accounting

Harvard Business School

MBA