What we own and what we're building

Black Sails Capital is a holding company. Each entity has its own thesis.

We acquire and build quietly. Owners and employees come first; press releases don't.

Owned

Owned · Research

Ad Naves Capital

Ad Naves Capital is Black Sails Capital's research and writing arm. It publishes long-form analysis at the intersection of activist investing, capital allocation, and operator behavior. The platform's core product is the Nautilus Engine, a systematic framework for identifying shareholder activist campaign vulnerability in U.S. mid-cap public companies before public 13D disclosure. The publication is in build mode. The fund is in pre-revenue track-record formation. Both are intentionally slow.

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In build

Laelaps & Co. is Black Sails Capital's platform brand for pet services in eastern Pennsylvania. Two brands are in build mode under the platform, each with its own operating team and positioning.

In diligence · Day care and boarding

A doggy daycare in the Philadelphia suburbs

The operators built this location under a franchise model. Royalty drag, brand restrictions, and decisions made far from the local market made it hard to run the business the way they wanted to. We are partnering with them to rebuild the operation independently, with the team that's been there from the start. This will be the first Laelaps & Co. location, with day care and boarding as the core services.

In development · In-home pet sitting and dog walking

A white-glove in-home pet care service

A premium in-home pet care service led by a career veterinary nurse. Services include in-home pet sitting and dog walking, delivered to a white-glove standard. The model is built around a single, named caregiver with real clinical experience, in contrast to the rotating-roster model common to mass-market platforms.

We are actively looking for additional operators to bring into the platform. If you run a groomer, trainer, kennel, or adjacent pet-services business in eastern Pennsylvania and are thinking about your next chapter, we'd like to talk.

Advisory

Some operators we work with bring us into multiple parts of their business over time. We treat that as the strongest evidence that the work matters.

Advisory · Retainer engagement

A martial arts studio in Malvern, PA

Ongoing advisory engagement covering growth planning, marketing infrastructure, and operations. As part of the work, we built a custom member tracking system for the studio. In its first weeks of use, it surfaced two at-risk members for re-engagement and led to four new intro class bookings. The owner is a long-tenured operator preparing the business for its next phase. Engagement is month-to-month under defined scope, kept separate from any acquisition conversation.

Advisory · Project engagement

A small real estate investment firm

Project-based advisory engagement covering financial and operations work for a small portfolio of rental properties. The initial project, books cleanup and chart-of-accounts restructuring, is complete. The current project is a custom property management application built specifically for the operator's workflow, covering maintenance, vendor management, scheduling, and on-demand reporting. Each project is scoped and priced independently.