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Lee Midkiff

Founder and Managing Partner of Bunnell Hill Partners. An operator who has held the CEO, COO and CFO seats and built and sold companies in legal data, settlement services and software.

Lee Midkiff, Founder and Managing Partner of Bunnell Hill Partners

Biography

Lee Midkiff is Founder and Managing Partner of Bunnell Hill Partners, a Cincinnati-based firm that gives growing, owner-led businesses senior operating leadership and the engineering team to carry it out. He leads the firm's partners and its client relationships.

Before founding the firm, Lee co-founded ExpressClose, scaling it from 3 people to more than 270 before its sale to Radian Group in 2002. He then built CIN Legal Data Services, which exited in 2012 and is now part of Stretto. He has held CEO, COO and CFO seats across software, legal services, financial technology, insurance distribution and insurtech, and franchise systems, and has led companies through capital raises and acquisitions on both sides of the table. Owners working with him get someone who has carried payroll, customers and technology decisions, and lived with the results.

Outside the firm, Lee co-founded Eclipse Thoroughbred Partners, which won multiple Grade 1 races, including the Arkansas Derby with Danza, who went on to run third in the Kentucky Derby. He is a former board member of NCRA.

Seats held
CEO, COO, CFO
Companies built and sold
ExpressClose, sold to Radian Group (2002). CIN Legal Data Services, exited 2012, now part of Stretto.
Transactions
Mergers and acquisitions on the buy side and the sell side
Also
Co-founder, Eclipse Thoroughbred Partners. Former board member, NCRA.
Education
Indiana University
Connect with Lee on LinkedIn

Career record

  • Founder and Managing Partner, Bunnell Hill Partners. Cincinnati, Ohio.
  • Built CIN Legal Data Services. Exited in 2012; now part of Stretto.
  • Co-founded Eclipse Thoroughbred Partners. Multiple Grade 1 wins, including the Arkansas Derby with Danza, third in the Kentucky Derby.
  • Co-founded ExpressClose and scaled it from 3 to more than 270 people. Sold to Radian Group in 2002.
  • Former board member, NCRA.

Field Notes by Lee

Short pieces on leadership, operations and AI, written from inside the seat.

Field Notes 01

AI is compressing the org chart. The bottleneck has moved.

As AI absorbs entry-level review and screening work, senior judgment becomes the scarce resource, and the pipeline that used to produce it is thinning.

LeadershipRead on LinkedIn

Field Notes 02

Most AI projects don't fail at the model. They fail at the product owner.

The technology is rarely the constraint. The missing piece is an accountable owner who knows the workflow and can decide what good looks like.

AI in operationsRead on LinkedIn

Field Notes 08

Our best QA engineers do not work for us. They are our earliest users.

Staging covers the inputs you anticipated. A trusted cohort of production users catches the rest, and they are the most valuable people in the deployment chain.

TechnologyRead on LinkedIn

Talk to Lee about what you are facing.

Executed, not advised.

The first conversation is with a partner, often Lee himself. We will talk through the situation, what you have tried and whether we are the right fit.

Book an introductory meetingSend us a note

Conversations are confidential.