Chandler Reed bought a rate-sensitive construction shop with more hustle than capital

The Setup Chandler Reed had entrepreneurial drive and almost no capital. He had not heard of ETA (entrepreneurship through acquisition) as a formal path when, in January 2021, Sam Rosati posted on Twitter looking for "an entrepreneurial searcher/operator who has more hustle than capital and willing to move quickly on a deal." Chandler was already in Tampa. He replied, moved fast, and ended up running Get Green NOI, a project-based construction business serving commercial property owners. - Tampa-based, already on the ground near the asset - No prior acquisition experience, no formal search - Deal sourced through a single tweet and a fast conversation The Deal The transaction was structured for a searcher who was long on hustle and short on equity. Rosati had the capital and the deal; Chandler brought the operator seat. Specific terms were not disclosed publicly, but the setup looks like a classic sponsor-plus-operator pairing: capital partner takes the equity risk, operator takes the company and earns in through performance. - Sponsor-operator pairing rather than a traditional self-funded SBA search - Speed was the edge; the tweet-to-LOI cycle was measured in weeks, not months - Chandler entered a business he had not picked from a thesis; the thesis found him First 100 Days The business was project-based construction tied to commercial real estate economics. Revenue came in lumpy chunks. Each project required estimating, scheduling, sub coordination, and collection. There was no recurring-revenue cushion to smooth the learning curve. - Learned project accounting and percentage-of-completion rhythms on the job - Inherited the sales pipeline and had to keep bids flowing while learning the trade - Discovered quickly that the business' demand curve was not really about construction; it was about interest rates and the willingness of commercial property owners to finance capex Operating Lessons Chandler went through two full cycles inside roughly 30 months. Boom. Bust. Boom. The whiplash shaped the entire operating playbook. - Project-based businesses are cash-flow traps for undercapitalized operators. Working capital requirements spike exactly when demand spikes, and they stay locked up in WIP and receivables long after the invoice is sent. - Interest-rate sensitivity is a hidden leverage bomb. Get Green NOI's customer decisions were driven by financing availability, not by the underlying value of the work. When rates moved, the pipeline moved twice as hard in the same direction. - Backlog is not revenue. It is a promise that can be cancelled, deferred, or repriced the moment macro shifts. - Sponsor-operator deals demand real alignment on what "bad quarter" means. A capital partner who has not run a project shop can underestimate how quickly a soft quarter becomes a cash crunch. - Speed of entry has a cost. Chandler got the seat because he moved fast. That same speed meant less time to stress-test the rate-sensitivity of the demand side.