Searcher Buys Colorado Fence Company, Rolls Into PE Platform 13 Months Later

The Setup Jack Saville is a 2002 West Point grad and former Army infantry officer. He spent time in commercial construction project management, then ten years at Capital One while earning an MBA at University of Richmond. At 40, with teenage kids watching, he left corporate to search for a business to buy. No fund, no committee. Self-funded, with his wife as co-investor. He sourced through BizBuySell, supplemented by offshore deal-flow support. The bigger input was Sam Rosati's SMBootcamp in May 2022, which supplied Jack's entire deal team and the relationships that later mattered more than the deal itself. The Deal Strategic Fence is a commercial fencing operator based in Breckenridge, Colorado. Revenue mix spans commercial fence, residential, temporary fence rentals, and ancillary services. SDE at acquisition sat in the $750K-$1.5M range with 15-20% margins. Sellers were a husband-and-wife Australian team, high-integrity, and one of them quipped that "fencing's the second oldest profession in the world." LOI ran June-July 2022. Close was January 2023. Capital stack: - 80% common equity from Jack and his wife - 20% preferred equity split between Jack and PSG pro-rata to capital - 20% seller financing via a forgivable note: interest-only for years one and two, then five-year amortization, with principal forgiveness tied to revenue staying above the prior year The forgivable structure is the interesting piece. It parked downside protection on the seller's side of the table, aligned both parties on keeping revenue flat or better, and softened cash outflow in the first two years when a searcher has the least margin for error. First 100 Days Jack moved to Colorado alone. His son joined after the school year; wife and daughter stayed in Virginia through the daughter's high school. He inherited 25 people and the reality that "you are always buying a job," regardless of deal size. He pushed geographic diversification into Denver and other resort markets to de-risk the Breckenridge concentration. Operating Lessons - Resort-town labor is a structural constraint, not a temporary one. Wages, housing, and seasonality compound. - Crew leaders leaving to start competing shops is the default in trades, not the exception. Plan for it before it happens, not after. - A forgivable seller note with revenue-based forgiveness is a real tool. It rewards continuity, not just payment. - "Until you're in it, getting punched in the mouth every single day, 30, 40 times a day, you don't truly appreciate how hard it is." The gap between diligence models and Monday morning is wide. - Geographic concentration caps growth even when unit economics work. A lifestyle business in a small TAM is still a lifestyle business. - Bootcamps and operator networks return more than the deal they help you close. Jack's exit counterparty came from his Sam Rosati relationship, not a banker. Where They Are Now February 14, 2024, Jack sold Strategic Fence to Perimeter Solutions Group, Sam Rosati's commercial fencing platform backed by Bertram Capital. PSG operates as, unofficially, the largest commercial fencing company in the U.S. Jack...