Sounding 01  /  What one number conceals

The business does fifteen percent.We buy the four numbers underneath it.

Bayman buys and operates founder-owned businesses. We join the system that records the work to the accounting file, and rebuild true margin job by job, before we price anything.

I own one of these I invest or refer
Rebuild outputIllustrative

EBITDA, blended. What the business earns before interest, taxes, and paper deductions. The number a seller quotes.

15.0%
01Maintenance agreements~0%
02Warranty and callback reworkneg.
03Replacement and install33%
04Service and repair45%
05Indoor air quality51%

This owner believed replacement carried the company. It was being carried by a maintenance base the owner had not repriced since 2019. Illustrative, and not the results of any engagement or investment.

Named for the baymen of the Great South Bay, who sounded the bottom before they trusted it and weighed every catch at the dock. They knew exactly what the day earned them. It is a low bar and most businesses this size still do not clear it.

Revenue$10K–$20M
EBITDA at entry$500K to $4M, or none at all
What we payFour to seven times what it earns, or nothing at close
SectorsEssential services
StructureDeal by deal

Sounding 02  /  The thesis

Essential businesses, priced below what they are worth, sold by a generation that is retiring.

A furnace that fails in January is not a discretionary purchase. A commercial chiller is maintained on contract in any economy. The demand is durable, local, and repeat, and right now the owners who built these businesses are retiring faster than the market has priced in.

Most of these companies run on instinct and a bank balance. The owner knows what came in this month, and rarely knows which service lines actually make money, which crews carry the business, or whether the maintenance base is growing or quietly shrinking. The information was always in the business. Nobody ever built the thing that reads it, because at this size nobody thought it was worth building. That is the gap. We would rather close it than price it.

The largest sponsors have already proven the model. Blackstone, Bain, Alpine, Leonard Green, and Altas are paying 17 to 18 times earnings for platforms at scale. We acquire the businesses that feed those platforms, at a fraction of the price, and we bring the one thing none of them offer a ten million dollar owner: someone who understands, job by job, how that specific business makes money.

We buy at a fair price, install the visibility the owner never had, and run the business off what it shows. The return compounds from cash flow, not from betting the business sells for a higher price down the road.

Read the full investment thesis

Sounding 03  /  Measurement

Measurement is a form of respect.

Most of these companies were built over thirty years by someone who never had the tools to see them clearly. Handing an owner a formula over the tax returns treats that as a transaction. Rebuilding what they actually built, and telling them the truth about it, treats it as the life's work it is. It also happens to be how you avoid overpaying.

Sounding 04  /  The valuation ladder

The same business is worth nearly three times more once it is bigger.

Price scales with size far faster than quality does. We buy at the bottom of this ladder and build businesses that belong further up it. That spread is not a gap that gets competed away. It is structural, and it is the whole economic reason the platform model exists.

Sub-$1M EBITDA3.0–4.5×
$1M to $3MWhere we buy5.0–7.5×
$3M to $10M7.0–10.0×
$10M to $25M9.0–13.0×
$25M-plus platforms13.0–20.0×

EV/EBITDA ranges from CT Acquisitions' 2026 tiered HVAC analysis. The top tier is press-derived. The largest sponsors have paid 17 to 18-plus times for platforms at scale. Our disciplined entry range is 4 to 7 times.

Sounding 05  /  The transfer window

Of every hundred owners, seventy-two have no plan.

This is not a standing condition a buyer can wait out. It is a window, it is open now, and it closes as this generation finishes retiring.

No written succession plan Have a plan
6MU.S. businesses projected to change hands by 2035
15–20%have ever obtained a professional valuation
65 → 71average intended retirement age, last decade

McKinsey Institute for Economic Mobility and Forbes reporting, 2026. Small-business succession and ownership statistics, 2026 reporting. Full citations in the investment thesis.

Sounding 06  /  How we reach a business

Two doors. One engine underneath both of them.

Every acquirer in this market has one door: buy the business. Every advisor has a different door: tell the owner something and leave. Bayman is the only firm where the diagnostic and the underwriting, meaning the work of figuring out what a business is worth and what we would pay for it, are the same artifact. Not a similar process. The same model, built by the same person, off the same data.

Door one

The Weigh-In

A fixed-fee engagement for an owner who wants to know what the business actually earns, job by job and crew by crew, before deciding anything. Sell, hold, grow, or hand it to a kid who is not ready. There is no obligation to sell, and we say so in writing before the engagement starts.

  • Margin by service line
  • Margin by technician and crew
  • Recurring revenue quality
  • Demand and conversion
How the Weigh-In runs
Door two

Acquisition

The same rebuild, run under an LOI, the written offer that comes before the real paperwork starts, prices the deal. We do not bid off the blend. We price the parts, and that changes both what we offer and how confidently we hold the number when it is challenged.

  • The owner always initiates the sale conversation
  • The advisory engagement closes in writing first
  • We recommend independent representation
  • Any difference from the Weigh-In is written down and handed over
Start a conversation
The seam

The fee is never credited against a purchase price. Connecting them would give us a financial reason to want the sale and give the owner a reason to prefer us over a better offer. The whole model depends on the fee standing on its own.

Sounding 07  /  What makes us different

Not a fund that happened to pick this industry.

01

We rebuild the margin before we bid.

Most buyers underwrite off three years of tax returns and hope the operating upside shows up after close. We join the target's field service data to its accounting file and rebuild true margin by crew, by service line, and by job type before we price the deal. It changes what we bid, and how confidently we hold the number.

02

Our edge is operating fluency, not a checkbook.

Every fund in this space can write a check. What we bring is fluency in how a contractor earns: where a callback really costs, why an underpriced maintenance base looks like revenue and prices like a liability, how a booking rate quietly caps growth. That is the qualification, not a line on a resume.

03

No pot of money with a deadline on it.

We buy one deal at a time, and line up the money for each one separately, on purpose. A fund that raises money in advance has a deadline to spend it, which is how buyers end up overpaying near the end. Every deal we do stands on its own economics.

04

The return comes from cash flow, not from a resale.

We do not price a business on the assumption that it sells for more later. The return is built from margin we find and fix, and from overhead that collapses across a growing platform. If a bigger, cleaner business also sells for a higher multiple later, that is upside we did not pay for.

05

We do not operate the businesses. We put gauges on them.

A traditional sponsor needs a deal team, a finance function, and a floor of people at head office telling its companies what to do. We do that work with two people and a model, because joining field service data to an accounting file and running it forward is no longer a job for a room of analysts. What that does not replace is the person who dispatches the truck, hires the technician, and handles the call at seven on a Saturday. Every business we buy keeps its general manager or hires one. The layer we replace is the corporate one above them, not the operating one underneath.

06

One of us closes a contractor's books every month.

Everyone in this market describes operating fluency. Logan does the monthly close for blue-collar businesses across Long Island, and has for years, which means a messy accounting file and an unallocated cost side are not a case study to him. They are this month. That is the difference between a firm that has read about how these businesses earn and a firm where one partner has his hands in the books while the other is on the phone with the owner.

Sounding 08  /  What we buy

A narrow test, applied to a wide field.

Most buyers draw the boundary around an industry. We draw it around a condition: the business sends people to places, and what any single job earned cannot be read off the accounting file. That test holds at every size. What changes with size is what we are able to pay with, so the terms split into two bands.

Band one

Established.

Businesses with earnings to price and a record to rebuild. Essential and recurring services: HVAC, plumbing, electrical and roofing, and equally landscaping, pest control, fire and life safety, restoration, commercial cleaning, medical transport, equipment rental.

Revenue
$2M to $20M
EBITDA
$500K to $4M at entry
Ownership
Founder-owned, no prior institutional capital
Structure
Majority or full buyout, owner rollover welcomed
Entry multiple
4 to 7 times EBITDA
Geography
United States, built in density-first regional clusters
Data condition
Labor hours booked against jobs, in whatever system the business already runs
We pass when
The margin question is already answered, or there is no operating record to rebuild from

Band two

Sub-scale.

Businesses too small for anyone to underwrite, starting around ten thousand dollars of revenue. There are no earnings to price and usually no record to rebuild, so we do not pretend to underwrite one. We contribute the operating systems, the operator keeps running the business, and the risk we take is time rather than capital. That is why this band is open to any industry.

Revenue
From roughly $10K. Below what any buyer will look at
EBITDA
None expected
Ownership
Owner-operated, usually the first business that person has run
Structure
Nominal or no price. We contribute operating systems rather than cash and take equity for them
Entry multiple
None. There is nothing to multiply, and nothing is paid at close
Sectors
Any. At this size the risk is our time, not our capital
Data condition
None. There is nothing to read yet, so we build the record rather than rebuild it
We pass when
You could hire the same people tomorrow and be missing nothing

Sounding 09  /  What we build

We also build things. That is not the same as buying them.

The mandate above is what Bayman acquires, and it does not move. Separately, on our own account, we build software and own it outright. Two different activities, kept apart on purpose, because running them together is how a portfolio page starts counting things nobody bought.

First one
Drink Social
What it is
A consumer app that rates a drink and the room it is served in as two separate scores
How we own it
Built in house. Nothing was purchased and no price was paid
Held in
A wholly owned subsidiary, separate from the acquisition entity
Status
Pre-revenue. Launching in one Chicago corridor
Counted as a deal
No. Nothing we build is counted as an acquisition

Sounding 10  /  What we build

Why publish something with nothing to show yet.

01Because the alternative is worse

A thing we made is not a thing we bought.

The easy version of this page lists Drink Social under a portfolio heading and lets the reader assume. We are not going to do that. An owner deciding whether to sell us his business is entitled to know that our deal count is zero, and a firm that rounds up on the small things will round up on the large ones.

02Because it says something true

Two people, and the thing gets built.

We already claim that joining field service data to an accounting file and running it forward is no longer a job for a room of analysts. Drink Social is the same claim in a different room. It was written, tested, and shipped by one of us in a week, which is the reason our diligence runs on a model we built rather than a headcount we hired.

03Because it will be judged either way

Published, with the state it is actually in.

No users, no revenue, no claim that it works yet. If it does not clear the bar we set for it, that will be published too. A firm with no track record should be judged on its thinking, and thinking you only show after it works is not thinking, it is a highlight reel.

Sounding 11  /  Value creation

Sequenced, not hoped for.

01Before close

Rebuild the margin

We rebuild job-level margin from the business's own field service and accounting data, and we price the parts rather than the blend.

02First 100 days

Measure and stabilize

Crews keep their jobs, their software, and their routines. We install measurement and correct the clearest pricing leaks the rebuild already found.

03Months 4 to 12

Turn data into margin

Pricing to target by job type, coaching technician efficiency off a real scorecard, repricing and growing the maintenance base, and lifting the call booking rate before spending another dollar on demand.

04Year 1 to 2

Consolidate, then bolt on

We build a shared back-office spine, then add nearby businesses in the same area that plug into it. Exit-readiness is the byproduct of running the business this way, not a project at the end.

Read the full playbook

Sounding 12  /  Frameworks

The tools we use, published in full.

A firm with no track record should be judged on its thinking. None of these stop working because somebody else knows about them, so we publish them. If you run one of these businesses, you can use them without us.

01

Revenue × Quality × Transferability

Value is a product, not a sum. Owners reach for revenue because it is the lever they can see, and it is the one with the lowest ceiling. Double all three terms and you have eight times, not three. Volume alone, sold at the same price into the same market off the same capacity, does not get to a step change. It gets to tired.

02

The Site File

A business where the knowledge lives in one person's head cannot be sold, financed, staffed, or scaled. Written files per site turn what the best technician carries in her head into something the company owns. The test: could somebody who has never been to this site do the work to standard tomorrow, using only what is written down?

03

Route Density Is the Margin

In any business that sends people to places, price is capped by the market and drive time is capped by nothing. Four jobs a day fifteen minutes apart against forty is roughly seventy-five minutes of recovered production per truck per day. This is why we build in clusters, and why density is an underwriting input rather than a travel preference.

04

The Capacity Ceiling Test

A growth target a founder can hit by working harder proves the founder can work harder. Set it past the ceiling on purpose, because the moment a business needs a second pair of hands is the moment everything implicit has to become explicit. One job, done to standard, by somebody who is not the founder, using only what is written down.

Read the frameworks in full

Sounding 13  /  Why we do it this way

Three convictions, and we run the firm off them.

01

The number that sells a business is never the number that runs it.

A blended margin is an average of things that have nothing to do with each other. It cannot tell an owner which crew to coach, which line to stop selling, or what the maintenance base is actually worth. We think the useful number has always been underneath, and that almost nobody has gone to get it.

02

A clock makes you buy badly.

The most reliable way to lose money in this strategy is to raise money in advance with a deadline to spend it, then buy something late just to put it to work. So we do not. We buy one deal at a time and line up the money for each deal separately, and every deal has to stand on its own economics. Walking away has to stay cheap or it stops happening.

03

We would rather be trusted for what is true.

Bayman is two people and no track record yet. We are not going to dress that up, because the owners we want to buy from can tell, and because a firm that inflates the small things will inflate the large ones. Our qualification is fluency in how a contractor earns, at the level of the individual job. That is the thing that is scarce, and it is the thing we actually have.

Sounding 14  /  Team

Two founders. Neither of us learned this from a deck.

Jack Ward, Co-Founder of Bayman Capital Partners

Jack Ward

Co-Founder

Sourcing, seller relationships, and channel partnerships. Jack finds founder-owned businesses before they run a formal process, and earns the trust of owners for whom this is the biggest financial decision of their lives. He runs the findings conversation and every acquisition negotiation.

He is also managing partner of NoBullStrategy, a separate and unaffiliated firm that does commercial and go-to-market work for private equity firms and their portfolio companies. That work is where the discipline behind this one came from: diagnosing why a business is not earning what it should, then building the thing that fixes it, on a fixed fee against a named outcome.

Logan Bardunias, Co-Founder of Bayman Capital Partners

Logan Bardunias

Co-Founder

Diligence infrastructure, job-cost underwriting, and post-close financial operations. Logan builds the margin rebuild that underwrites every deal and runs it forward as the operating dashboard after close. The allocation decisions are his, and he does not negotiate the price derived from them.

He has been doing the books for blue-collar businesses across Long Island for years, and still does. Not as a case study. As the current month's close. When we say we understand where a contractor's money actually goes, that is not a claim about a methodology we designed. It is a description of what one of us does every month for real companies with real payroll.

Sounding 15  /  Get in touch

Two doors, because owners and investors ask different questions.

Selling or weighing a business

Tell us about it. We come back to you quickly, and the first conversation is about your business, not our fund.

Every inquiry is treated as confidential. See our Privacy Policy.

Investing or referring a deal

We will walk you through how we underwrite and where we are building.

Not an offer of securities. See our Important Disclosures.