Acquiring Minds Taking a Single-City Acquisition Nationwide
16 snips
Feb 26, 2026 Edward McDonnell, an engineer-turned-CEO who grew Botanical Designs from one Seattle branch to eight locations across five states. He discusses choosing a traditional search fund, buying and scaling an indoor-plant service, digitizing ops with CRM and EOS, expanding by acquisition and market tests, running remotely with local GMs, and exiting to private equity while staying on to lead further growth.
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Search Funding Improves Objectivity
- Having funded search capital changes behavior by letting you visit more opportunities and avoid short-term frugality that hurts decision quality.
- Edward spent on flights and meetings he otherwise would have skipped, widening deal flow and objectivity.
Acquired A Recurring Interior Plant Business
- Botanical Designs was a single-branch Seattle interior-plant and living-wall company with ~75% recurring revenue.
- Edward found the business during his search, liked low capex, limited customer concentration, and strong local tailwinds.
Fix Back Office Friction First
- Digitize the back office early to remove daily friction and boost field staff effectiveness.
- Edward prioritized CRM and information access so teams stopped hunting Outlook threads for customer contacts.