Taylor Mattingly bought Energy Ogre, a Texas electricity concierge, for 55% debt

The Setup Taylor Mattingly spent most of his career at Deloitte in management consulting. After business school he stayed on the partner track, then walked away. His high school friend and college roommate John Watson had just finished Stanford Business School and caught the search fund bug. The pitch was simple: partner search, complementary skills, 20 years of built-in trust. Both had just gotten married. Both wanted to start families. If they were going to uproot, they wanted to do it with someone whose spouse was already a close friend of the other spouse. They raised over the winter of 2023-2024, launched in February 2024, and signed an LOI in May. Taylor ran marketing and business development. John ran finance and IT. Co-CEO from day one. The Deal Energy Ogre is a Houston-based electricity concierge. For $10 a month, it maps each member's usage curve against every plan in Texas's deregulated market, enrolls them in the best fit, handles all provider communication, and actively monitors the commodity to switch or blend them into better rates when the market moves. Average savings to the customer: roughly $500 a year after the $120 fee. Taylor had been a customer for seven or eight years. He also knew one of the co-founders through his mother, a relationship going back to high school. Conversations about a possible transition started in fall 2023, well before he'd raised a dollar. The triggering event came in May 2024 when the CEO co-founder decided to move to Germany to support his wife's career. The other co-founder wanted to start a new venture with his son. The exit window opened. Price and structure were agreed within a week. Capital stack: 45% equity, 20% seller note, 35% conventional debt. That 55% total leverage is aggressive for a traditional search deal. Taylor's investors got comfortable with it because the revenue is subscription, the cash flow is predictable, capex is minimal and mostly maintenance, and the business was well into eight-digit revenue with strong EBITDA margins. Target close was 75 days. Actual close was 95. The delay came from diligencing the regulatory posture (Energy Ogre is a broker licensed by the Public Utility Commission of Texas) and explaining consumer churn mechanics to investors used to B2B portfolios. Operating Moves First full year the partnership made two significant pivots. They expected retention was mature. It wasn't. The retention team was strong at processing cancellations but weak at saving the customer who called in confused about market rates. They rebuilt the function around one-call resolution and education. A one-point churn improvement on a recurring-revenue business of this scale moves the enterprise value meaningfully. Second pivot: they killed several business development bets that weren't converting and leaned harder into traditional marketing and technically integrated partnerships. They adopted EOS, running 90-day sprints. John took the integrator role, Taylor the visionary. The tech is the moat. The co-founders custom-built the scraping, pricing models, CRM integration, and the power-of-attorney workflow that lets Energy Ogre take action on a...