Timber Bay Partners Taps Jason Wehby as CFO

Timber Bay Partners, a Miami-based private equity firm focused on lower-mid-market investments, named Jason Wehby as Chief Financial Officer on Monday. The appointment signals the firm's intent to professionalize its finance function as it scales deal activity and expands its portfolio across residential services, healthcare, and industrial sectors.

Wehby joins from a two-decade career spanning corporate finance, accounting, and operational leadership roles. Most recently, he served as CFO at a mid-market manufacturing company, where he led a financial restructuring that improved EBITDA margins by 180 basis points over three years. Prior to that, he held senior finance positions at firms in the logistics and professional services sectors.

"Jason's coming in at a moment where we're managing more capital, more portfolio companies, and more complexity than at any point in the firm's history," said Timber Bay managing partner David Rodriguez in a statement. "We needed someone who could build infrastructure that scales — not just keep the books clean."

The hire comes as Timber Bay closes its third institutional fund, targeting $250 million in commitments. The firm currently manages eight active portfolio companies with combined annual revenues exceeding $400 million. Five of those acquisitions closed in the past 18 months, accelerating the need for centralized financial oversight and reporting.

Timber Bay's decision to bring in a dedicated CFO reflects a broader trend among lower-mid-market private equity firms: the realization that outsourced accounting and ad hoc financial leadership don't scale past a certain portfolio size. Firms managing fewer than five companies can often get by with part-time CFO consultants or internal accounting staff. But once deal volume picks up and LP reporting requirements intensify, the model breaks.

"There's a structural gap in how most sub-$500 million PE firms think about finance," said Emily Chen, a partner at executive search firm Heidrick & Struggles who specializes in CFO placements. "They'll spend six months finding the perfect VP of Operations for a portfolio company, but they're running their own firm's finances with a bookkeeper and QuickBooks."

That gap becomes acute when firms start managing multiple funds simultaneously — which Timber Bay now does. Fund I is in harvest mode, with three remaining portfolio companies. Fund II is fully deployed, with all capital called and companies in value-creation phase. Fund III is ramping, with capital calls beginning in Q2. Each fund has different LP reporting cadences, different fee structures, and different compliance requirements.

Wehby's mandate includes consolidating financial reporting across all three funds, building out quarterly LP reporting packages with more granular portfolio-level data, and standardizing how Timber Bay tracks value creation metrics at the company level. He'll also lead budgeting and cash management for the firm itself — a function that's been handled informally by the partners until now.

Timber Bay focuses on what it calls "essential services businesses" — companies that provide recurring-revenue services in sectors with high barriers to customer switching. The firm targets EBITDA between $3 million and $10 million, equity checks between $10 million and $40 million, and geographic concentration in the Southeast and Texas.

The current portfolio tilts heavily toward residential services. Three companies operate in HVAC, plumbing, and electrical services. Two are in healthcare — one ambulatory surgery center platform and one home health provider. The remaining three span industrial maintenance, commercial landscaping, and specialty logistics.

All eight companies share a common profile: founder-owned, operationally solid but under-professionalized, and positioned in fragmented markets where buy-and-build strategies work. Timber Bay's playbook is straightforward — install financial controls, hire a full-time CFO at the portfolio company, bolt on 2-4 smaller acquisitions, then sell to a larger PE fund or strategic buyer within four to six years.

That playbook requires capital discipline at the firm level. Wehby's job is to make sure Timber Bay knows — in real time, not retrospectively — how much dry powder remains in each fund, which companies are ahead or behind budget, and whether the firm is on track to hit its target returns.

"Jason's going to give us the infrastructure to move faster," Rodriguez said. "Right now, if we want to know whether we can make another platform investment this quarter, it takes us two days of spreadsheet work to figure it out. That shouldn't be the bottleneck."

Wehby spent the first decade of his career at KPMG, eventually making senior manager in the firm's transaction advisory practice. That gave him exposure to buy-side and sell-side M&A processes, quality of earnings work, and financial due diligence — all directly relevant to PE portfolio management. He left in 2014 to join a portfolio company as VP of Finance, a move he describes as "learning how the sausage actually gets made."

The broader trend driving Timber Bay's hire is regulatory and operational pressure. LP reporting requirements have gotten more demanding — institutional investors now expect ESG data, portfolio company-level diversity metrics, and more frequent updates on value creation progress. Fund accounting has gotten more complex as firms layer in co-investment vehicles, continuation funds, and separately managed accounts alongside traditional commingled funds.

At the same time, the cost of CFO-level talent has come down relative to firm economics. A decade ago, hiring a full-time CFO for a $200 million AUM firm felt like overkill — the all-in comp package ($250K-$350K including bonus and carry) was too large a percentage of management fees. But as firms have grown and fee streams have become more predictable, the math has shifted.

"If you're managing $250 million and charging a 2% management fee, that's $5 million in annual revenue before expenses," Chen noted. "A $300K CFO is 6% of that. If they save you one bad decision a year — over-allocating to a deal you don't have room for, missing a compliance deadline, screwing up an LP distribution — they've paid for themselves."

There's also a talent availability issue. The last five years have produced a cohort of experienced finance executives who spent their careers at larger PE firms or portfolio companies and are now open to smaller platforms. They've seen what good looks like at scale and are willing to build it from scratch at emerging managers.

Wehby fits that profile. He's not coming from a bulge bracket PE fund or a Big Four partnership. He's coming from the operating world, where he's built finance functions inside companies that didn't have them. That's the skill set Timber Bay needs — someone who can implement systems, not just run existing ones.

Wehby's first 90 days will focus on three things, according to Rodriguez. First, auditing the current state of financial reporting across all funds and portfolio companies. That means understanding what data exists, where it lives, and how reliable it is. Second, selecting and implementing a portfolio management system that consolidates everything into one dashboard. Third, building out quarterly LP reporting templates that meet institutional investor expectations.

After that, the mandate expands. Wehby will take over budgeting and cash management for Timber Bay itself, working with the partners to model out capital calls and distributions for Fund III as it deploys. He'll also formalize how the firm evaluates new deals from a portfolio construction perspective — making sure Timber Bay doesn't over-concentrate in one sector or over-commit capital before exits materialize.

Timber Bay's growth mirrors Miami's broader emergence as a hub for smaller private equity firms. A decade ago, the city was known primarily for Latin America-focused funds and real estate capital. That's changed. Over the past five years, at least a dozen lower-mid-market PE firms have either launched in Miami or relocated there from the Northeast.

The drivers are well-documented: no state income tax, improving talent density, easier access to the Southeast deal market, and lifestyle appeal for partners who don't want to be in New York or Boston anymore. But there's also a clustering effect happening. As more firms set up shop in Miami, the city's developing a services ecosystem to support them — law firms opening PE practices, accounting firms expanding transaction advisory teams, executive recruiters specializing in portfolio company talent.

"Five years ago, if you were a CFO candidate and a Miami PE firm called you, you'd think twice," said Chen. "Now it's a legitimate option. There are enough firms here that if one role doesn't work out, there's another opportunity down the street."

Timber Bay isn't trying to compete with the Blackstones of the world. It's not raising billion-dollar funds or chasing mega-deals. But in the $10M-$40M equity check range, the firm's positioned in a segment of the market that's proven resilient through multiple cycles — essential services businesses with recurring revenue and strong unit economics.

With Fund III closing in Q2, Wehby will be managing capital deployment in real time — not just reporting on it after the fact. The firm expects to make 5-7 platform investments over the next 24-30 months, plus another 15-20 bolt-on acquisitions across those platforms. That's a pace of roughly one platform deal every four months and one add-on every six weeks.

Each platform investment will require Wehby to model out the capital structure, coordinate with lenders on debt financing, and build a financial integration plan for the first 100 days post-close. For add-ons, he'll need to make sure each portfolio company has the balance sheet capacity to absorb the acquisition and the reporting infrastructure to integrate it cleanly.

The subtext of Timber Bay's CFO hire is that professionalization has become a competitive advantage in the lower-mid market. When the firm is competing against other PE funds for the same deal, having strong financial infrastructure signals operational maturity. Founders selling their businesses want to know that the buyer can close on time and won't blow up the deal over an accounting discrepancy in due diligence.

It also matters on the LP side. Institutional investors allocating to smaller funds want assurance that the firm can handle the operational complexity of managing multiple funds and portfolios simultaneously. A dedicated CFO checks that box in a way that "we outsource our accounting" doesn't.

"LPs are tired of funding firms that can't send clean financials on time," said Rodriguez. "It sounds basic, but half the firms our size don't have it figured out. That's a solvable problem."

Wehby officially starts May 15. His first task — according to Rodriguez — is to figure out exactly how much dry powder Timber Bay has across all three funds. The fact that it's not immediately clear tells you everything about why the hire was necessary.

One less-obvious benefit of bringing in a firm-level CFO is that it frees up the partners to focus on portfolio company operations rather than internal administration. Rodriguez and his team have been spending 20-30% of their time on fund accounting, LP reporting, and compliance work — time that could be spent coaching portfolio company CEOs or sourcing new deals.

Wehby's hire also sets a standard for portfolio companies. If the PE firm itself has a full-time CFO with deep systems and processes, it becomes harder for portfolio companies to argue they don't need the same. Timber Bay has already told its eight active investments that they'll be expected to upgrade their own finance functions over the next 12-18 months.

"We can't ask our companies to run tight financial operations if we're not doing it ourselves," Rodriguez said. "Jason's job is to model what good looks like, then help each portfolio company build toward that."

That cascading professionalization is part of Timber Bay's value creation thesis. The firm doesn't chase distressed companies or turnarounds. It buys healthy businesses that are under-managed and brings in process, talent, and capital discipline. A strong finance function is foundational to everything else — you can't optimize what you can't measure.

Timber Bay's CFO hire reflects a maturation phase in the lower-mid-market. A decade ago, firms this size were often one-fund shops run by a pair of former bankers or operators who kept overhead minimal and wore every hat. That model worked in an era of cheap debt and abundant exits, where process discipline mattered less than deal flow.

In 2026, that's changed. Debt is more expensive, exits take longer, and LPs are more selective about which managers get capital. The firms that survive aren't the ones with the best pitch decks — they're the ones that can execute consistently across multiple funds without blowing themselves up operationally.

Wehby's hire is Timber Bay's acknowledgment that it's no longer an emerging manager. It's an established firm managing institutional capital across multiple funds and growth phases. That requires infrastructure. The firms that recognize that and invest in it early will have an advantage. The ones that wait until they're in crisis mode — missing capital calls, filing late reports, losing track of portfolio company performance — won't.

"This isn't about gold-plating the organization," Rodriguez said. "It's about having the financial intelligence to make better decisions faster. That's the whole game."

Timber Bay Partners was founded in 2017 and is based in Miami, Florida. The firm focuses on lower-mid-market private equity investments in essential services businesses across the Southeast and Texas.