Peter Wilde, Carlos Laconi·September 14, 2023

Seller's View of a Searcher Buying His Business | Peter Wild & Carlos Laconi Interview

This episode features a unique 'reverse search fund' story told from two sides: Peter Wilde, the 46-year founder of Boston Tree Preservation (an organic tree and plant healthcare company in Greater Boston), and Carlos Laconi, an Argentine-born Babson MBA who was brought in to professionalize and package the business for sale. Rather than a searcher finding and buying a business, Peter Jr. cold-outreached Carlos on LinkedIn to join the company as an operator-in-residence with the goal of growing it and selling it to a qualified searcher. Over 18 months Carlos implemented Salesforce, digital contracts, mobile field tech, and telehealth-style remote assessments — dramatically improving operational efficiency and measurably growing revenue — before listing on SearchFunder.com and ultimately selling to Don Gurley (a military background self-funded searcher) via SBA financing. The business had several characteristics ideal for ETA: a highly differentiated organic niche with no direct competition, near-zero customer concentration across thousands of prepaid recurring contracts, strong margins, long-tenured staff, and a 40+ year track record. The episode is especially valuable for buyer-side listeners because Peter offers candid seller psychology — his resistance to fire-sale competitor offers, his emotional concern for employee continuity, and his growing comfort with the search fund model as the right vehicle for legacy preservation.

Deal facts

revenue: couple of millions in revenue
financing structure: SBA loan (referenced but not detailed)
notes: Business sold in 18 months rather than planned 36-month runway. First LOI buyer fell through due to inability to secure funding/investors. Final buyer was Don Gurley (military background). Previous competitors offered roughly fire-sale pricing (seller described as 'half of 1x'). Boston Tree Preservation operated March-December with two-thirds of revenue coming in as prepaid contracts in winter months. ~10,000 customers served, ~3,000-4,000 annually, ~20,000 service stops per year. Geographic footprint of ~20 square miles in Greater Boston area.

Why this business

Carlos identified Boston Tree Preservation as a perfect self-funded search candidate: stable 40+ year growth history, strong recurring prepaid contracts, near-zero customer concentration, excellent margins, and an owner (Peter Wilde) who had already delegated operations to another manager for years — proving the business could run without the founder. Peter wanted to sell to preserve the company legacy and employee relationships rather than accept fire-sale prices from competitors, and he liked the search fund model's emphasis on a committed local operator.

What's working

Deeply differentiated organic plant healthcare niche with no direct local competitors — Peter described feeling he 'had no competition' and set his own pricing standards
Multi-decade recurring customer relationships — 'working for the grandchildren of our first customer base' with thousands of prepaid annual contracts
Digital transformation: implementing Salesforce, QuickBooks Online, digital contracts with credit card processing, and mobile field tablets eliminated paper-based workflows and dramatically improved contract renewal rates and sales follow-up
Tech-enabled telehealth model for trees (photo-based remote assessments) accelerated during COVID and improved sales efficiency
Long-tenured, passionate staff with decades of institutional knowledge who stayed through the transition
Strong COVID tailwind: organic/green industry benefited as homeowners invested in their landscapes while stuck at home
Listing on SearchFunder.com generated ~60 inbound inquiries from qualified searchers, giving Carlos leverage to vet buyers

What's hard

Migrating from a 40-year-old custom FoxPro/dBase system to Salesforce was 'very frustrating' with 'a lot of accidents' — costly emotionally and financially, took years to get Peter's buy-in
Seller was emotionally resistant to selling to strategic buyers (competitors) due to concern about employee layoffs and brand erasure — narrowed the buyer pool significantly
The planned 3-year prep timeline was compressed to 18 months — required doing digital transformation, hiring, and sales growth simultaneously rather than sequentially ('we joined and just started touching all the buttons')
First LOI buyer (a known searcher contact) fell through when he couldn't secure investor funding, causing a false start
Carlos noted the challenge of aligning incentives — if he had bought the business himself, the seller worried Carlos would low-ball the price having seen all the financials
Previous approaches by local competitors offered near-zero multiples ('half of 1x' per Peter), making it hard to justify selling for years

Notable quotes

Selling a successful profitable business to the right individual is a serious chess game — you gotta move all the parts and all the players succinctly with the right people.

I thought the search fund concept wasn't for a business my size — I thought it was for businesses that were of greater scale. What I learned from Carlos was that there are people who live local who have an MBA who know the search fund routine and they want to buy a job and they want a local company and they want their relationships with local clients in a local community.

We consider that at some point — the reason we didn't end up doing that was because we wanted to align incentives and sell it at the maximum price. If I'm managing that business and now I know everything about that, I'll just try to pay not a lot.

I think you have to analyze the owner, the business owner, when you're looking at a company. You don't want to buy a small business where the owner lives in a shed and drives a really old van — when I saw Peter I mean he had a beautiful farm in Cape Cod and like trees, and his life was really interesting.