Sean Daly·March 6, 2025

Why Treat an Acquisition Like a Startup | Sean Daly Interview

Sean Daly is a Miami-based entrepreneur with a zero-to-one background who bought a 27-year-old HVAC company in Coral Springs, Florida for $700k (all cash: $630k equity plus a $70k seller note) in July 2024. The business was doing roughly $1.5m in revenue and about $200k in net income, with 9 employees and 5 trucks. Sean chose it not despite its small scale but because of it — the business was still running on punch cards and a whiteboard, and he saw immediate operational upside he could attack like a startup. Within weeks of closing he replaced legacy systems, offshored permitting and HR to Nicaragua, and built an inside sales team offshore to handle estimations and follow-up. The offshore inbound-call experiment failed (technical nuance required an in-house front desk), and a cold-outreach campaign was shut down after 45 days due to cost-per-lead above $1,000, but the inside sales model for outbound estimations has proven out. Net income has stayed flat while infrastructure is being built; Sean is targeting 20–30% revenue growth in the next six months and plans to use this as a platform for further acquisitions. The episode is notably a masterclass in velocity-of-experimentation thinking applied to SMB acquisition, with frank discussion of what failed as quickly as what worked.

Deal facts

purchase price: $700k
sde ebitda: SDE ~$200k
revenue: $1.5m (3-year average)
financing structure: All cash: $630k equity + $70k seller note
notes: No SBA used; seller had prior deals fall through due to SBA delays and explicitly ruled it out. Business had 9 employees, office location, and 5 trucks. 27 years in operation.

Why this business

Sean liked the 27-year history, thousands of loyal returning customers, and a founder he genuinely connected with. He saw the business as effectively a startup he could modernize — punch cards for timekeeping, a whiteboard for scheduling — giving him room to apply tech and sales systems he already knew. He also reasoned he could start an HVAC company from scratch for similar capital, so buying an established one with existing customers and a trusted name was a better risk-adjusted bet.

What's working

Rapid technology modernization: replaced punch cards and whiteboard scheduling with a digital back-office system within 1.5 weeks, which stabilized after about 30 days
Offshoring back-office functions (permitting, HR) to a team in Nicaragua — described as going 'fantastically'
Hiring a dedicated inside sales/estimations person in Nicaragua who closed a $4,000 change-out within the first week that otherwise would have been missed
Systematized estimation process: field techs gather specs, a templatized price sheet in Nicaragua spits out margin and pricing, inside sales handles all follow-up
Self-funded, all-cash offer that stood out in a competitive process and satisfied a seller who had explicitly ruled out SBA
Strong proprietary outreach search process: emailed thousands of businesses, had 50+ owner conversations, found the deal in month 4 and closed within 45-60 days
Long-term compounding mindset: treating it as a platform for future acquisitions rather than chasing short-term income

What's hard

SDE of ~$200k is very thin; no room for error on capital allocation, marketing spend must be highly selective
Offshoring inbound customer calls to Nicaragua failed: technicians were overwhelmed by phone-tag daisy chains when the offshore rep couldn't troubleshoot nuanced HVAC questions; had to bring the front-desk role back in-house
Outbound cold-calling campaign (2 Nicaragua reps calling homes and businesses) shut down after ~45 days because cost per lead exceeded $1,000 — far above target
Cash flow challenges are endemic to the HVAC industry
Net income remained flat despite all operational changes — growth expected but not yet demonstrated in the numbers
Business is much smaller than the prior deal Sean nearly closed (that one was ~$10m revenue, ~$1.5m EBITDA); the small scale limits how much can be spent on testing channels

Notable quotes

I looked at it kind of like a startup and I had a real head start with so I feel very comfortable in environments that are chaotic. I could put my money into a startup literally from zero to one, I could start an HVAC company, buy trucks and then go out and do marketing, or I could use that in this business and just rearrange things.

The punch system was still there and I was like why is this still here? I threw away the punch system, I literally threw it in the trash. I said okay, that's the end of that.

You don't have to be a technical person to sell software, you don't have to be a technical person to sell an AC unit. You need to be able to sell it. I guarantee that person would be better at selling than you are even though you know the product better, because they are so much better at follow-up.

I think the purest definition of entrepreneurship that I found is being able to proceed with a business or an idea without regard for current resources.