The Origin of
It began under an oak tree in Kalamazoo, Michigan.
Abhi Golhar grew up in a working class neighborhood where nobody talked about capital structures or enterprise value. But he spent every afternoon under that tree, filling notebooks with blueprints for companies that didn’t exist yet. The tree didn’t care that a kid from Kalamazoo wasn’t supposed to think that big.
That oak tree was his first advisor.
Solid. Quiet. Unmoved by everything around it.
At 19, he was $1,000,000+ in debt and at the center of a joint FBI and DOJ investigation. Wrong people. Wrong circumstances. No safety net.
Everyone disappeared. The shame was deafening.
The only thing that stayed was the voice from under that tree: “grow through this. You were meant to build.”
He rebuilt everything. Companies, reputation, trust. He built seven of them. Closed more than thirty investments. Earned three nationally touring keynotes. Spent years working alongside the FBI after discovering he had been a victim of mortgage fraud, and turned that experience into an unflinching understanding of what it takes to build something that actually holds.
He is an electrical engineer by training. When Abhi talks about systems and infrastructure, he is not using a metaphor.
He formalized a decade of capital markets relationships and operating experience into Meridian 84. And he carried one thing forward from all of it: the memory of what it feels like when nobody believes in you, and the knowledge of what happens when someone finally does.
Oak is the root system. The boy who sat under that tree grew up to understand something most advisors never learn: strength isn’t loud. It’s structural. Oak represents the discipline to build right before you build fast.
Lafayette is the forward motion. General Lafayette crossed an ocean in 1776 to provide critical outside support: capital, expertise, and relationships, behind a cause he believed in deeply enough to risk everything for. He did not advise from a distance. He showed up, got in the fight, and helped change the trajectory of a nation.
Lafayette & Oak launched in 2026, on the 250th anniversary of that commitment, built on the same belief: that the right outside partner, at the right moment, can change the course of what an operator is building.
Oak grounds us.
Lafayette moves us forward.
We partner with proven operators to build platform companies, and we stay in it through the build, not just through the pitch.
We back the leaders who have already done the hard part and are ready for what comes next.
We bring our full capability, our full attention, and our own stake in the outcome.
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