Katherine Butler Dines and Rahul Desai·November 10, 2025

Why Choose Ownership Over Being a CEO | Katherine Butler Dines and Rahul Desai Interview

Katherine Butler Dines and Rahul Desai are a married couple who conducted a self-funded search nights and weekends while holding demanding private equity operating roles, ultimately acquiring Women Travel Abroad — a niche women's group tour operator founded in 2014 — for $500,000 (approximately 1.9x SDE on ~$280k SDE / ~$800k revenue) using an all-equity structure with a 10% seller note and outside investors, retaining ~65% ownership themselves. Katherine's motivation to seek ownership came directly from a formative experience as a PE-backed CEO at an Alpine Investors portfolio company, where she faced investor pushback after giving a modest raise to a valued accountant dealing with a family health crisis — crystallizing her conviction that she needed to own at least 51% of any business she ran. Their investment thesis centers on using Rahul's technical background to build a proprietary group travel back-office platform (replacing expensive SaaS tools like We Travel and Soft Trip) that can be bolted onto multiple acquired niche tour operators, keeping net margins high (targeting 15-20%) as they scale, while leveraging an AI-driven SEO content system that 5x'd their website traffic in six months for $500/month. One year in, Katherine has reduced her hours from 60 to ~25-30 per week and the business is on track for $1M+ in revenue, with a second acquisition actively being sought.

Deal facts

purchase price: $500,000
multiple: ~1.9x SDE
sde ebitda: SDE ~$280,000 (just under $300k)
revenue: ~$800,000 at acquisition; ~$1,000,000 projected in 2025; $1.2-1.5M projected 2026
financing structure: All-equity deal with seller note (10% of purchase price = ~$50k). No SBA loan. Equity sources: personal funds, ~$100-125k from home equity refinance, outside investors (friends/family/strategic partners). Buyers retain ~65% ownership; outside investors hold ~35%.
notes: Listed slightly above 2x SDE; negotiated to ~1.9x. Seller initially resisted seller note but agreed in exchange for more cash upfront. Business: Women Travel Abroad, founded 2014, niche women's group tour operator. Negative cash conversion cycle noted as a deal structure complexity. Buyers also internally spun up a separate corporate offsite brand projected to do $250k topline in 2026.

Why this business

Katherine had prior industry experience working for a travel startup in Morocco, understood the sales and marketing dynamics, and saw that niche group tour operators had strong gross margins (25-40%) and pricing power unlike traditional travel agencies capped at 10-15% commissions. She wanted a business where Rahul's technical skills could automate the headcount-heavy back office, enabling margin expansion. She also valued the working capital float (customers pay upfront months in advance) and the reoccurring traveler loyalty (30-35% repeat rate). Travel was also personally meaningful to her.

What's working

Organic SEO growth driven by an agentic AI system writing blog content: 5x website traffic increase in six months for ~$500/month marketing spend
Tech-enabled back office built by Rahul using no-code orchestration tools and AI, replicating core functionality of commercial tour operator software (We Travel, Soft Trip) and saving ~$10-30k/year in software fees
Strong reoccurring traveler loyalty: 30-35% of travelers repeat annually; top travelers average three trips per year
Roster of 12 1099 contractor trip hosts (former travelers turned hosts), reducing owner-dependency on the founder
Very clean transition: seller was working only ~10 hours/week, single employee provided operational continuity, consulting period was minimal
All-equity structure with seller note eliminates debt service pressure and allows long-term capital discipline without a forced exit timeline
Float from upfront customer payments generates treasury interest sufficient to pay off seller note each month
Reduced time commitment from 60 hours/week at acquisition to ~25-30 hours/week after one year, freeing capacity for a second acquisition

What's hard

Cash accounting books at acquisition created deal structure complexity around unearned revenue / negative cash conversion cycle; Katherine acknowledges she made mistakes negotiating this and would handle it differently
Business is small (~$280k SDE), requiring Katherine to wear many hats simultaneously — individual contributor in sales, marketing, operations, plus capital allocator and strategist
DTC organic growth is slow; projecting only 10-30% annual topline growth, meaning a 4-5M revenue target is 5-10 years away organically
Cannot afford meaningful full-time staff at current scale; relies heavily on virtual assistants in the Philippines and contractor hosts
The first deal they nearly closed fell through when the sellers' home burned down — significant time and legal/diligence costs were sunk with no deal
Searching nights and weekends while holding demanding PE operating partner day jobs was psychologically grueling, particularly for Rahul who eventually stepped back from the search

Notable quotes

I came home to Rahul and I was like, 'This is not where I want to be long term. This is not going to work for me. I need to be in a place where I own the business and I own the majority of it and I can decide to run the business however I want.'

We'd rather own more of a smaller outcome than a very tiny fraction of a big outcome.

The underlying thesis of our business is that all group travel is alike. The front-facing brands are different, whether it's a corporate off-site or a women's trip or university alumni travel or whatever, but actually the back office is all the same.

5xed our website traffic in six months by having an agent write SEO articles.