Buyers and Builders

My guest today is Justin Escajeda, an entrepreneur who owns 12 trade businesses around Pittsburgh, employing roughly 250 people and generating more than $50 million in annual revenue. What makes Justin’s story interesting is that he never set out to become an acquisition entrepreneur. He started in masonry, construction and real estate before buying his first roofing company which did $600k in SDE in 2018 for $846k. That acquisition changed how he thought about building businesses. Today, J...

Greg Geronemus bought a ~$5M EBITDA business with no operating experience, financed half the purchase price with a seller note, and spent his first year doing something most new owners struggle to do: almost nothing. Four years later, the business was larger, professionally managed, dramatically delevered, and sold at roughly 9x EBITDA—producing just under a 5x net return and ~50% net IRR for investors. Greg breaks down the entire journey: finding the deal, negotiating the structure, taking...

Frederik Brandis was one of the key minds behind Arsipa, a buy-and-build platform focused on acquiring occupational medicine and workplace safety consultancies. As one of the earliest investors and strategic partners, he helped scale the business through dozens of acquisitions before it achieved an exit to Warburg Pincus just three years after its founding. Today, he is the Founder & General Partner of Aven Capital Partners, where he backs exceptional entrepreneurs before they even own a...

Greg Geronemus is the Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Footbridge Partners, where he backs entrepreneurs pursuing search funds and other forms of Entrepreneurship Through Acquisition (ETA). Before becoming an investor, Greg lived the search fund journey himself. In 2013, Greg and his partner David acquired a tour operator generating roughly $5 million of EBITDA. Over the next four years, they grew EBITDA by approximately 50%, paid down most of the company's $20 million debt load, and ultim...