Amir Haboosheh·July 6, 2023

Snowball Effect : Getting to $45m in 3 Years | Amir Haboosheh Interview

Amir Haboosheh is the co-founder of Snowball Industries, a roll-up platform targeting home services trades (primarily HVAC, plumbing, electrical) that has completed six acquisitions and reached $45m in consolidated annual revenue within roughly three years of founding in mid-2020. Amir came from a background in cybersecurity, enterprise IT, digital marketing, and online business private equity before pivoting to trades, having recognized that digital business multiples were inflated, platform risk was high, and local service businesses had durable competitive moats and were under-professionalized. Snowball's distinguishing features include retaining acquired brand names, offering equity stakes to field employees and sellers, providing Silicon Valley-level benefits packages to tradespeople, and pursuing a public listing (NYSE or TSX) as the permanent liquidity event rather than a PE-style flip. The first acquisition, Anderson Air (HVAC in Northwest Arkansas), grew from $10m to $21m+ revenue under the stewardship of the selling owner's son promoted to GM, powered by leadership development workshops, EOS-light frameworks, and an aggressive SEO program through the acquired digital agency Digitally Savvy. A core lesson from the episode is that searchers buying trades businesses should hire an experienced operator-GM from day one to de-risk the acquisition and protect cash flows rather than running the business themselves.

Deal facts

multiple: 4-5x EBITDA at acquisition (per Amir's general comments on entry multiples)
sde ebitda: ~$3.5m consolidated EBITDA projected by year-end (all entities); Anderson air grew from ~$10m to $20m+ revenue
revenue: $45m consolidated revenue (tracking at time of interview); Anderson air at ~$21m revenue
financing structure: SBA loans referenced as part of acquisition process; equity crowdfunding raises for snowball investors; seller equity roll-in offered to sellers
notes: Six total acquisitions at time of interview (started with four: three home services, one digital marketing; two more closed recently). First acquisition was Anderson Air in Northwest Arkansas (HVAC), second was Clover in Fairfax/Ashburn Virginia. Also acquired Diamondback and digitally savvy (digital marketing agency). Snowball Industries is pursuing a public listing (NYSE or TSX) targeting Q1/Q2 2025 or when revenue exceeds $100m. Offers equity shares to employees and sellers as part of deal structure.

Why this business

Amir and his co-founders left digital/online business acquisitions because multiples got out of hand, platform risk was too high (Google algorithm updates, Facebook policy changes), and global competition eroded margins. They identified that HVAC, plumbing, and electrical trades were underinvested, had local competitive moats (competitors are just within the locality), were recession- and pandemic-resilient, and offered the opportunity to professionalize businesses that lacked digital presence and management infrastructure. They also believed the trades offered a meaningful mission: providing employees with equity ownership and benefits comparable to tech companies.

What's working

Retaining acquired brands and brand equity (Anderson Air, Clover, Diamondback) rather than rebranding under Snowball, which resonates with both employees (tribal identity) and sellers (legacy preservation)
Hiring operators from within or from larger companies in the same trade, with GMs typically coming from businesses double or triple the size of the acquisition
Anderson Air grew from $10m to $20m+ revenue in under 3 years, from 30 to 70+ personnel, driven by empowering the founding family's son as GM and investing in leadership development
SEO and digital marketing via the acquired firm Digitally Savvy; Anderson Air reached 50,000+ monthly website visitors in under two years starting from no website at acquisition
Employee equity ownership program: Snowball shares offered to field staff, GMs, and service managers as a recruitment, retention, and mission-alignment tool
Multiple expansion from roll-up: individual businesses acquired at 4-5x EBITDA; as a consolidated entity EBITDA multiples expand to 8x, 15x+ in private and public markets
EOS-light (Entrepreneurial Operating System) quarterly leadership workshops with a structured four-L framework (liked, longed for, learned, lacked) to surface issues and drive 90-day action plans
Benefits parity: same health/dental/vision package for field workers as for executives, covering 80-85% of family costs
Collaborative (not prescriptive) management model that gives operating companies autonomy while Snowball provides coaching, financial intelligence, and marketing support

What's hard

Building the leadership team took time: Anderson Air took two years to fully assemble its management layer (service manager, pre-construction manager, people ops leader)
Identifying and placing a qualified GM is a prerequisite for every acquisition — if no GM can be identified from within or the network, the deal is passed or repriced
Sellers who are pure owner-operators with $900k+ SDE are less attractive than businesses with existing management at $500k SDE because the high SDE often reflects the owner doing everything themselves
Sellers resist reductions in valuation even when operator-dependency justifies it; owner dependency must be priced into the deal
The transition to Snowball's management model involves false starts in leadership team composition — the team in place two years ago is not the same as today's
Operating in geographically dispersed markets (Northwest Arkansas, Virginia, Washington state) without physical proximity adds management complexity
Crowdfunding/public-listing path requires maintaining audits, investor communications, and regulatory milestones on top of running operations

Notable quotes

if you have a plumbing company in Austin all your competitors are just in Austin all your competitors are just within that locality and so it makes a lot more difficult anybody with the internet access and a laptop can start a content site

when you buy a business and what's attractive about it it's the cash flow it's that consistent cash flow year over year for the past 10 years and that cash flow has in it baked in many years of experience many years of mistakes many years of trial and error why would you like to reintroduce uncertainty to that cash flow

when you sell to snowball you sell forever because our flip is to be listed our liquidity event for investors is to be a publicly traded company and at that point there is no second flip

being respectful to that levels that they have that ownership and the badge of honor that they wear with it every single day and every time that they pick up the call and say welcome to Anderson air you can feel it you can feel it in their chest bumping up