Jenna Whigham·April 9, 2026

A Search Fund Journey to $350m | Jenna Whigham Interview

Jenna Whigham and her brother Dennis co-founded a traditional search fund in 2018 after careers at Anheuser-Busch and Wayfair respectively, both MIT Sloan MBAs. They acquired Abound (then Apto Bound) in October 2020 for roughly $85-88 million (~8.8x EBITDA) on a $10 million EBITDA, $55-60 million revenue base, with Housatonic Partners taking 51% of the equity check and four of seven board seats — an unusual majority-investor structure driven by the deal's size. Abound is a North Carolina-originated home care services company providing in-home support to adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD), funded almost entirely by Medicaid waiver programs, with a proprietary EHR/software subsidiary (OnTarget) that has become the company's central M&A and operational moat. By 2026, through seven-plus acquisitions across four states and expansion into pediatric nursing and elderly personal care, the business has grown to roughly $350-375 million in revenue and $75 million in EBITDA with ~7,000 employees serving 6,000 patients. The software business enables a distinctive playbook: enter a new state with software sales first, lay Medicaid billing infrastructure, identify and acquire software customers as tuck-ins (with integrations completed in under 30 days), then drive organic growth through referral relationships and brand. The key challenges are the price-taker Medicaid rate structure, the extreme people-intensity of low-wage caregiving at scale (high turnover, HR incidents), and political risk around Medicaid funding. An exit is anticipated in the 18-24 month horizon, with the team focused on finding a buyer that will preserve the mission.

Deal facts

purchase price: ~$85-88m (approximately 8.8x EBITDA)
multiple: ~8.8x EBITDA
sde ebitda: EBITDA ~$10m at acquisition (pro forma)
revenue: ~$55-60m at acquisition; ~$350-375m current (pro forma)
financing structure: Search fund equity (Housatonic Partners took 51% of equity check, remainder from search investor group); subsequent acquisitions funded via cash flow and debt facilities (no additional equity raises)
notes: Earnout of ~$15m on top of ~$85-88m base price; seller received full earnout. Majority investor (Housatonic) holds 4 of 7 board seats. Current debt ~$200m (~<3x EBITDA). Business: Abound (formerly Apto Bound), home care services + EHR software for IDD population, North Carolina-based, closed October 2020.

Why this business

Jenna and her brother Dennis wanted to run something together with a real mission and tangible operations. They had both explored building a craft butter company but found the unit economics unattractive. They chose search because Dennis had found product-market fit exhausting and wanted to take over something that already existed. Abound (then Apto Bound) appealed because it had a clear recurring-revenue model serving adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities, a built-in competitive moat via its proprietary EHR software, and a mission component that FSI (the other LOI they had) lacked. The earnings were also large enough to support both of them as co-operators.

What's working

Proprietary EHR software (OnTarget) used as a Trojan horse for M&A: software sales team enters a new state first, lays billing/compliance groundwork, identifies acquisition targets, and enables 30-day integrations for software customers
Recurring, lifetime revenue from Medicaid waiver slots: once an individual receives an IDD waiver, the funding is permanent and the agency can serve them for life, creating very high customer LTV
Geographic diversification across four states (NC, PA, NJ, MI) reducing single-state Medicaid 'stroke of the pen' risk
Expansion into adjacent service lines (pediatric nursing care in 2024, personal care for elderly in 2026) diversifying payer mix
Strong cash flow cycle: Medicaid billing paid within roughly one week, enabling acquisition funding via cash and debt without dilutive equity raises
Mission-driven culture with daily huddle/core-values shout-out process inherited from founder; leadership team required to work as caregivers themselves
Low caregiver turnover (25%) versus industry average (~50% in personal care), driven by mission-aligned hiring and above-market benefits (health care, 401k match)
Reinvestment of software efficiency gains into caregiver wages rather than extracting as profit
Majority PE investor (Housatonic) fully aligned on mission; no board disagreements in ~6 years

What's hard

Price-taker dynamic: rates set by state Medicaid and managed care organizations (MCOs); no ability to self-price
Extremely people-intensive business: 7,000 employees serving 6,000 patients; HR incidents (abuse, theft, neglect) happen at scale and some are criminal in nature
Low-wage caregiver workforce with high turnover: 25% annually even for Abound, requiring thousands of replacement hires each year just to stay flat
Political/regulatory risk: current federal Medicaid rhetoric (big beautiful bill) is depressing exit multiples and creating uncertainty
Scaling is a grind: not a software-like scaling curve; growth requires constant M&A capability and referral network development
Majority investor structure (51% to Housatonic, 4 of 7 board seats) meant giving up control; unusual for traditional search and represented concentration risk pre- and post-close
Closed in COVID (October 2020), preventing normal immersion with the team and requiring creative virtual leadership from day one
As business scaled from 125 admin staff to thousands, Jenna lost the personal connection to individual employees she valued
Jenna personally finds the shift from hands-on operations to pure strategy unsatisfying as the business grew

Notable quotes

Once an individual gets an IDD waiver slot, so they've received the funding, they have it through the rest of their life. And so, if you're their agency, you have the ability to serve them from that point until until they die. And so, if you think about like in the — the lifetime value of a customer is is fairly high if you do the service well.

The software component has proven to be like the competitive advantage that we never knew we could have. It's provided a lot of financial benefit, M&A opportunity, and just ability to be agile in the Medicaid space, which is very challenging because you're subject to so many regulations and having the ability to tailor your software to those as needed has been extremely beneficial to our operations.

When Dennis and I joined the company in 2020, we signed up to be direct support professionals, which is the job title of a caregiver. I worked with one of our clients who had cerebral palsy, and I was out in the community with her once a week, twice a week sometimes. It's critical that for our culture that people roll up their sleeves and they do the work.

We as a company are not choosing to cut wages of our caregivers in exchange for delivering profits to a private equity funder. So, let me be very clear about that.