Trevor Boehm·December 6, 2022

How to Buy 15 Small Businesses and Build a Holdco | Trevor Boehm Interview

Trevor Boehm is an operating partner at Saturn V, a Colorado- and Texas-based holdco that has acquired 15 small businesses since its founding in 2017. The firm originated as a venture studio and stumbled into SMB acquisition as a cash-flow mechanism, ultimately discovering that services businesses offered superior risk-adjusted returns and meaningful community impact. Saturn V targets companies with $1m–$5m in EBITDA, uses a permanent equity / long-term hold model, and partners with embedded CEOs rather than operating businesses itself — making talent recruitment and development the defining bottleneck of the model. The episode covers Saturn V's philosophy of 'first do no harm' after acquisition, the challenge of loneliness for portfolio CEOs, how geographic concentration in Colorado and Texas has built proprietary deal flow, and how the firm is beginning to source operators externally (including via Search Funder postings). Boehm also reflects on the parallels and contrasts between venture-backed startups and SMB acquisition, and shares a cautiously optimistic long-term view despite near-term macroeconomic uncertainty.

Deal facts

sde ebitda: $1m–$5m EBITDA target range per acquisition
financing structure: Equity-based (holdco model, typically not SBA-backed)
notes: Saturn V holds 15 small businesses as of late 2022, founded in 2017, focused primarily in Colorado and Texas. Target EBITDA of $1m–$5m per deal. Long-term hold / permanent equity model. No SBA debt typically used.

Why this business

Saturn V originally started as a venture studio and bought cash-flowing small businesses to fund operations. They discovered that these 'boring' services businesses offered attractive risk-adjusted returns, meaningful community impact, and a large generational-transfer opportunity — and that became the primary focus.

What's working

Deep geographic focus in Colorado and Texas has built proprietary deal flow through relationships with brokers, sellers, and local networks
Partnering with embedded CEOs who run day-to-day operations gives Saturn V operating leverage across 15 companies
Long-term hold / permanent equity model appeals to legacy-minded baby-boomer sellers who want their employees and customers cared for
A community of portfolio CEOs provides mutual support, reduces loneliness, and accelerates learning across the platform
Internal talent development: promoting from within existing portfolio companies to fill future CEO roles

What's hard

Finding and retaining high-quality operators / CEOs is the biggest bottleneck to scaling the holdco
Each acquisition is highly idiosyncratic — no universal playbook; the first priority is 'do no harm' before optimizing
Small businesses have high key-man risk and few systems; new CEOs must rebuild resilience without breaking what works
Loneliness is pervasive for CEOs of portfolio companies, especially in early months of ownership
Macroeconomic headwinds (rising rates, potential recession) require balance-sheet discipline and scenario planning

Notable quotes

The default state of a startup is death right and so you're constantly just trying to like inject cash and energy into it to try to get it out of the gravitational pull right of death and sort of into orbit or beyond.

We first buy a company we know that there's a lot more that we don't know than there is that we do know and there's a lot of opportunity to break things — you think about this idea of enduringly profitable companies, well they've been enduringly profitable for a long time and the only variable that will have changed right once you've bought them is you.

Of those three things — capital, companies, and leaders — the people side, the leaders, are definitely the most difficult as well as I think the present the biggest opportunity for growth and for impact.

It's a lonely journey and I think the reasons for which it's lonely is that these are usually companies that don't have strong and sustainable leadership and the problems will come pretty much unilaterally to you and the decisions the biggest ones the company will need to be made ultimately by you.