Jordan Dubin·December 9, 2024

First Acquisition in March, $200m by Year End | Jordan Dubin Interview

Jordan Dubin, a 27-year-old former Goldman Sachs investment banker and El Cattertons private equity associate, co-founded Guild alongside two partners (Joe Delaney and Sean Slazak) to build a roll-up platform in the garage door repair industry. Their first acquisition closed in March 2024 and by year-end they were on track to surpass $200m in revenue and $30m in EBITDA — far exceeding their original five-year goal of $20m EBITDA. Guild's model involves partnering with 15-20 best-in-class regional garage door operators (Beach Heads), acquiring 70-80% majority stakes at mid-single-digit multiples while letting owners roll 20-30% equity for a second bite at premium exit multiples, then layering tuck acquisitions ($50k-level customer-list buys) into each regional platform. The thesis was built on identifying a 92%-fragmented, $13B TAM with proven consolidation precedent (A1 Garage Door's $100m organic build) but no PE-scale platform yet formed — a window Jordan and team moved aggressively to close through handwritten letters, same-day flights to meet owners, and radical transparency about the rollup strategy. The episode is as much a master class in rollup thesis formation, sourcing, and owner-alignment as it is a personal story.

Deal facts

multiple: mid single digits (stated as 'mid single digits multiple' for $1-2m EBITDA businesses)
sde ebitda: $400k-$7.5m EBITDA range across partner companies; smallest platform at $400k, largest at $7.5m
revenue: $200m+ revenue by end of 2024; 14% organic YoY growth
financing structure: $35m equity raised upfront, additional $5m equity ($40m total); ~$85m institutional debt facility (private credit); majority stake (70-80%) acquired in each partner company
notes: 14 deals closed as of episode date; tuck acquisitions as small as $50k cash; roll-up platform with owners retaining 20-30% equity; targeting $30m EBITDA by year end 2024; 600 vans on road; 20-person executive team

Why this business

The garage door repair industry was 92% fragmented with roughly 15,000 independent companies, a $13B residential TAM growing 7-9% annually, real industrial logic supporting consolidation (procurement savings from manufacturers, fleet, software), and only one precedent platform transaction (A1 Garage Door selling to Cortech Group). Unlike HVAC which was already crowded with PE, garage doors had no scaled platform of size yet proven by A1 that $100m+ organic scale was achievable. Jordan and his partners saw a narrow window to acquire the 10-15 best-in-class companies before other PE firms moved in, creating a moat by taking the only digestible assets off the board.

What's working

Hyper-authentic, transparent pitch to owners — Jordan introduced himself as a 'Jew from New York City' who would run their garage door business to zero without them, framing the deal as owners being buyers into a vision, not sellers cashing out
Proprietary sourcing via handwritten letters in craft envelopes and relentless phone calls — 700-800 letters sent, 10-15% response rate; 3 of first 5 deals sourced this way
Land-and-expand strategy: partner with 15-20 best-in-class regional Beach Head companies, then layer in tuck acquisitions (sometimes as small as $50k) to consolidate hyper-fragmented local markets
Back-end integration uniformity (Service Titan CRM, Sage accounting, ADP payroll) while preserving local brands, culture, and leadership on consumer-facing side
Roll equity structure (owners retain 20-30%) aligns long-term incentives; owners choosing Guild over PE firms offering 2-3x higher purchase multiples because they believe in the platform vision
14% organic year-over-year growth across the platform in addition to M&A-driven scale
Deep PE and buy-and-build experience (El Cattertons HVAC/plumbing rollups) gave team a ready-made operational playbook
Second-mover advantage: learning from A1 Garage Door's tech stack, branding, and Service Titan adoption rather than starting from scratch

What's hard

Took two to three months to get a single owner to return a phone call at the outset
Extremely small target universe: of 15,000 garage door companies, only ~100 have over $2m EBITDA, and fewer than 20 of those have less than 10-15% new construction exposure — limiting the addressable platform-quality companies to 10-15 candidates nationally
Speed imperative: windows of opportunity in fragmented home services categories close fast as PE firms pile in; required moving before anyone else could take the best assets off the board
Simultaneously managing multiple legal and financial diligence streams (Joe and Sean working past midnight regularly)
Balancing uniformity vs. localization — assuming what works in Phoenix works in Minneapolis is naive; consumer-facing operations must stay local
Raising equity and deploying $35m very quickly created execution pressure

Notable quotes

I'm Jordan Dubin, I'm from New York City, and if you think a Jew from New York City can come in and run your garage door business in Georgia you're crazy. If I took over your business, if I fired you and took over your business, it would go to zero. And so how you know this is going to be a true partnership is you may think you're reliant on me — I assure you I'm 10 times more reliant on you.

You are not a seller. You are a buyer, and you are buying into this vision and you are buying into being shoulder-to-shoulder with myself, Joe, and Sean in creating a first-of-its-kind platform in an awesome industry.

Of the 15,000 garage door repair companies in the US, only 100 have greater than $2 million of EBITDA, and of those 100, less than 20 have less than 10 to 15% new construction exposure. So when you think about your target universe, it's tiny.

We have assets who will join Guild over three or four other private equity firms trying to do the same thing as us, and those private equity firms will offer two to three turns higher than we're offering, and these owners still join Guild because they believe in the vision.