Josh Medow·August 28, 2023

How to Unlock Growth in a 40-Year-Old Business You Buy | Josh Medow Interview

Josh Medow is a West Point grad and former Army infantry officer who attended Harvard Business School and did a self-funded search, closing on Mercury — a 40-year-old Boston-based logistics company founded in 1984 — in January 2020 just before COVID. He acquired the 43-person company with an SBA loan, a seller's note, and an equity raise, putting none of his own money in. The company originally served law firms but had quietly pivoted to healthcare and life science shipping over the prior decade without ever articulating that identity. Josh's main insight was that Mercury was already a healthcare logistics company — confirmed by MBA interns analyzing customer data — and he went all-in on that niche, rebuilt the software from scratch, implemented EOS during COVID to reorganize leadership, and hired a strong VP of Product (later promoted to CEO) who created a talent flywheel. Revenue more than doubled after the healthcare-only pivot and the company now does $40-50m in revenue, with Josh aiming to take it public over a 10-to-20-year horizon. His search was notable for its scrappiness: he ran a team of 20-30 remote interns over the search period, built a proprietary outreach database of 80,000 companies via a Boston Public Library card, and refined his email/call process to a 12% positive response rate across 22,000 outbound contacts.

Deal facts

revenue: tens of millions at acquisition; $40-50m at time of interview
financing structure: SBA loan + seller's note + equity raise; no personal cash invested
notes: Closed January 29, 2020. Three sellers (founders) looking to retire. Company founded 1984 in Boston, MA. 43 employees at acquisition. Guest went into personal credit card debt during search and had zero personal equity in the deal.

Why this business

Josh found Mercury through proprietary outreach. The three founders were looking for a buyer who would care about their employees and grow the business long-term rather than sell to private equity or a competitor. The fit was mutual — they were looking for him as much as he was looking for them. The business was unique (one of one), based in Boston where he was already living, and had a hidden technology backbone and a nascent healthcare niche that he saw as a growth lever over a 10-to-20-year horizon.

What's working

Pivoted the company to focus exclusively on healthcare and life science logistics, which was already 60-70% of revenue but not recognized as the core identity — this clarified the target market and unlocked rapid growth
Rebuilt internal and customer-facing software from scratch, transforming the company into a tech-enabled healthcare logistics platform with proprietary cloud tooling tailored to healthcare regulatory complexity
Implemented EOS (Entrepreneurial Operating System) during COVID, using the crisis as cover to reorganize structure, install accountability, and install a leadership team comprising long-tenured internal promotions
Hired a VP of Product (later promoted to CEO) as the first key outside executive, which created a talent flywheel — each strong hire made the next one easier by helping sell the vision
Used MBA summer interns to do deep competitive and customer analysis, which produced the insight that Mercury was already a healthcare logistics company and should go all-in on that identity
Became preferred shipping partner of MassBio, anchoring market position in the Boston biotech ecosystem
Winning SEO on specialized healthcare shipping terms (e.g. 'UN 3373B biological sample shipping') rather than generic logistics terms — niche positioning drives inbound
Revenue more than doubled after going all-in on healthcare; now at $40-50m with a leadership team and IPO as long-term goal

What's hard

Closed in January 2020 just before COVID; had to immediately shift 43 employees to remote with no remote infrastructure (everyone had desktop computers)
Had 12 direct reports at acquisition — too many — which forced early EOS implementation ahead of original plan
Building the software platform took years and multiple failed attempts: went through four heads of product and three different engineering models before finding a stable approach
Being a first-time owner replacing three founders who had run the company for decades, while being younger than most employees — used EOS and respected internal leaders to establish authority
The search itself was done with no money — lived in parents' basement, maxed out credit cards, worked from home — and required extreme scrappiness throughout
Initial brokered LOIs (landscaping, printing company) fell apart: first due to inflated broker presentation and project-based revenue, second due to extreme owner dependency (two owners doing everything themselves)
Proprietary outreach at scale was tedious and error-prone (accidentally emailed a city about buying their public swimming pool)

Notable quotes

I've always thought that kind of no matter what I buy I'm gonna change it into what I want it to be and that kind of goes along with the 10 to 20 year plan if you do a funded search and you have five years it's really tough to change a landscaping company into something really fast growing and exciting but over 10 to 20 years you can make it whatever you want.

I literally had interns negotiating LOIs that I'd never even seen and I just said you know bring me the good ones.

We had become a healthcare logistics company and we'd been that for a while but nobody knew that and recognized that. And so that was one of the first big changes is just realizing like hey, healthcare life science, that's actually what we should do and we should just do that.

Help's not on the way — it's just me out there.