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Home Services (Residential HVAC)

PE Firm Builds 5-Location Roll-Up in 18 Months with Continuous AI Sourcing

Lower mid-market PE fund, $150M AUM

The Challenge

A lower mid-market PE firm had acquired a platform HVAC company and needed to execute a bolt-on acquisition strategy to reach critical mass. The investment thesis called for 4-6 bolt-on acquisitions within 24 months to build a regional platform with $15M+ revenue. The firm's two-person deal team was spending 70% of their time on sourcing — searching databases, cold-calling business owners, and attending industry events — leaving insufficient bandwidth for deal execution and integration oversight. The firm had evaluated hiring a dedicated sourcing analyst at $110K+ but was concerned about the ramp time and the cost of data subscriptions that analyst would need.

The Solution

DealsByTed was deployed on the Hunter plan with a highly specific thesis: residential HVAC companies, $1.5M-$6M revenue, owner-operated, within 200 miles of the platform company, with maintenance contract revenue representing 25%+ of total revenue. Ted delivered 50+ qualified targets monthly, each with ownership verification, estimated revenue, employee count, service area analysis, and competitive positioning. The deal team eliminated their sourcing time entirely and focused exclusively on owner outreach, relationship building, due diligence, and integration management.

Results

  • 287 qualified HVAC targets identified over 18 months
  • 68 owner conversations initiated
  • 12 companies progressed to preliminary evaluation
  • 5 bolt-on acquisitions closed (4.1x average EBITDA multiple)
  • Platform revenue grew from $4.2M to $16.8M
  • Deal team reallocated 70% of time from sourcing to execution
  • Total DealsByTed cost: $90,000 (18 months on Hunter plan)

Timeline: Pipeline established in week 1. First bolt-on closed at month 4. Five acquisitions completed by month 18.

“Before Ted, our deal team spent most of their week sourcing. We were leaving deals on the table because we did not have bandwidth to pursue every opportunity. Ted gave us a pipeline we could not have built ourselves. 287 qualified targets in our exact thesis — same geography, same service model, same revenue range. We closed 5 of them at multiples well below what we would have paid in a brokered process. The $90K we spent on Ted generated tens of millions in enterprise value.”

Managing Partner

Lower Mid-Market PE Fund

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