CEO in Residence / Operating Partner

SMB Deal Hunter; United States; On-site; USD 350,000 - 600,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity stake

Retainer during search

Full transaction team

Job summary

SMB Deal Hunter is seeking exceptional operators to act as CEO in Residence (Operating Partner) to lead platform acquisitions in their industry from sourcing to value creation. The role emphasizes equity ownership, heavy sourcing leverage, and collaboration with our capital and deal‑structure teams to accelerate growth.

You will own the outcome, executing a sourcing strategy, negotiating with owners, and building a high‑performing company through bolt‑ons and organic growth.

Qualifications

• Ten or more years operating in a single industry.
• Full P&L ownership at a company, division, or business unit doing $25M+ in revenue.
• Experience in PE-backed or acquisitive environments is helpful but not required.
• Proven ability to source, structure, and close acquisitions.
• Ability to build and lead a platform through bolt-ons and organic growth.

Responsibilities

• Own the sourcing strategy within your industry and develop proprietary deal flow.
• Negotiate from first conversations through LOI and close with support from the investment team.
• Manage P&L from day one, driving revenue growth and efficiency.
• Lead expansion into new markets and determine entry strategy by acquisition or internal build.
• Hire, develop, and hold accountable a high-performing management team.
• Drive the platform build and bolt-on integration to create enterprise value.

Skills

Industry expertise

Deep relationships

Acquisition strategy

Negotiation

P&L ownership

Job description

Partner With Us to Buy and Run the Leading Company in Your Industry

Location: Flexible (U.S.)

Hunter Equity Partners is the investment arm of SMB Deal Hunter, the leading small business M&A platform serving 240,000+ buyers, sellers, and investors.

In the past 12 months, we've invested over $15M in equity capital into 3 platforms with a total enterprise value of over $165M (avg of $56M).

We are now looking for a small number of exceptional operators to lead the next ones, as a CEO in Residence (Operating Partner).

This is not a traditional CEO role.

We are seeking accomplished operators with deep industry expertise, extensive relationships, and the ambition to build a market-leading platform through acquisitions and organic growth. As a CEO in Residence, you will develop and execute an acquisition strategy within your industry, leveraging your experience, network, and reputation to identify and pursue exceptional opportunities.

While you will lead the sourcing effort, you won't be doing it alone. You bring the industry expertise and the ability to run the company. We provide the capital, transaction expertise, and acquisition infrastructure to help you move faster and execute more effectively.

What We're Building

The first acquisition is the entry point, not the goal. We are backing operators who intend to build the leading company in their industry, through a platform acquisition, a series of bolt-ons, and real organic growth on top of both.

Where we start: a platform business with $3M+ in EBITDA, which you lead the sourcing on. Bolt-ons after that can be considerably smaller.

Pace: we expect the platform acquisition to close within twelve months, and sooner is better. That is achievable because you are sourcing from relationships you already have rather than building a network from scratch.

What makes a business a fit: contracted or mandated recurring revenue, non-discretionary demand, fragmented ownership, and a deep buyer universe on the other side of the hold period. We favor mission-critical services over discretionary spend, commercial and industrial customers over residential, and businesses where the downside is protected before the upside is modeled.

Industries where we are actively looking:

• Fire and life safety, and mandated inspection services.
• Route-based facility services. Pest control, hygiene, specialty cleaning, waste.
• Testing, inspection, and certification (TIC) and environmental compliance.
• Mechanical and HVAC-MRO services. Commercial, industrial, or residential.
• Insurance brokerage and specialty distribution.
• Specialty and engineered precision manufacturing. Aerospace, defense, medical.
• Infrastructure and utility services. Horizontal directional drilling, underground, water, grid.
• Essential government-contracted services. Landscaping, facilities, IT, grounds maintenance.
• Healthcare services without direct reimbursement risk. Veterinary, behavioral health, revenue cycle management, healthcare IT, staffing.
• Vertical-market software and tech-enabled niche services.

If your industry isn't listed but shares these characteristics, we want to hear from you.

What You'll Own

You own the outcome. Concretely, that breaks into two phases.

Sourcing and Acquisition

• The sourcing strategy in your industry, and the relationships that produce proprietary deal flow from owners, executives, intermediaries, and referral sources.
• Screening and prioritizing targets against agreed acquisition criteria.
• Negotiations with owners, from the first conversation through LOI and close. Our investment team runs structuring, diligence, and financing alongside you, so you are leading the relationship rather than managing the paperwork.

Operating and Value Creation

• The P&L from day one as CEO. Revenue, margin, headcount, and cash.
• Top‑line growth. Pricing, sales capacity, marketing, and how the company wins work it isn't winning today.
• The offering itself. What you keep, what you kill, and what you add, and how the business is positioned against local competitors.
• Operating efficiency. Labor utilization, scheduling, procurement, and the unit economics that decide whether growth is actually profitable.
• Expansion into new markets. Which geographies, in what order, and whether you enter by acquisition or from scratch.
• The management team you hire, develop, and hold accountable.
• The bolt‑on program. Finding targets, integrating them, and delivering the synergies you underwrote.
• Positioning the company for exit. The reporting, systems, customer diversification, and management depth that make a larger strategic or financial buyer pay a premium. Your equity converts when that happens, so this is your outcome as much as ours.

Who You Are

We don't care about your MBA. We care whether owners in your industry take your calls.

• You have spent twenty years building equity for someone else. You want the next stretch building your own.
• You have a thesis, not an ambition. You can name which niche is fragmented, why it consolidates, and who you would call first.
• You want the equity, not the title. A CEO seat is available to you elsewhere. Significant ownership in a company you chose, and the upside that comes with building it, is not.
• You would rather be accountable than comfortable. You are taking on real risk in exchange for real upside, and that tradeoff appeals to you.
• You are building, not job‑hunting. This is a multi‑year commitment to creating enterprise value.

What's Mandatory

• Ten or more years operating in a single industry, deep enough that you know which owners are approaching retirement and where the margin actually sits.
• Full P&L ownership at a company, division, or business unit doing $25M+ in revenue. Owned it, not managed it. You have hired, fired, priced, and managed through a downturn.
• An industry on our target list, or one that shares the same characteristics.
• A U.S. operating track record. You are based in the U.S. and your P&L experience is with U.S. businesses. The platform and its bolt‑ons will be here, and so will the owners you need to win over.

Helpful, not required: experience inside a PE‑backed or acquisitive company, so you already know what a board expects, how a lender thinks, and what a QofE looks like. Buy‑side involvement in add‑on acquisitions is a plus. You do not need prior deal experience. That part is ours.

What We Provide

Our goal is to let exceptional operators focus on finding and building great businesses instead of raising capital and assembling an investment platform.

• We cover deal costs. Legal, quality of earnings, diligence, financing, and structuring fees are ours, including on deals that die at the one-yard line. You never write a check to chase a deal.
• Equity capital from our investor network. You are not fundraising. You are not pitching strangers on your first deal.
• Debt financing. We structure and negotiate the acquisition debt with lenders we have relationships with.
• A full transaction team. Structuring, financing, legal, accounting, and diligence support from people who close these deals for a living.
• Proprietary off‑market deal flow. Our nationwide acquisition platform and the SMB Deal Hunter network generate bolt‑on opportunities you would not see otherwise, on top of what you source yourself.
• Relationships with brokers, intermediaries, and industry advisors.
• Operational playbooks and strategic support through acquisition, integration, and growth.

You are the primary driver of sourcing within your industry. Our role is to amplify that so you can execute more transactions than you could on your own.

Why This Beats Going It Alone

Plenty of talented operators try this as a solo independent sponsor. Most of them spend two years learning how hard it is.

Going independent means you personally fund the search. You pay for legal and quality of earnings out of pocket, and when a deal breaks in diligence, and some will, that money is gone. It means raising capital from scratch on every deal, from investors who want to see a closed transaction before they will fund one. It means negotiating your own economics from a position of weakness, because the person with the capital sets the terms. And it means spending the majority of your calendar on fundraising and process management instead of on the thing you are actually world class at, which is knowing your industry and winning the trust of the owners in it.

With us, the capital, the transaction team, the deal costs, and the infrastructure are already in place. You spend your time sourcing, negotiating, and operating. That is the difference between one deal in three years and a platform.

Compensation

You are paid from the start, not from close. You are not funding the search out of savings, and you never write a personal check to pursue a deal.

• During the search: a retainer, paid from the date we begin working together
• At close: market CEO compensation for a company of that size, plus a performance bonus tied to results
• Significant equity in the platform you acquire, with long‑term upside tied to value creation
• We cover all transaction costs. Legal, quality of earnings, diligence, and financing fees are ours, including on deals that die in diligence.
• You invest alongside us. We expect operating partners to put meaningful personal capital into the deal. This is separate from deal costs, which are always ours, so you are never risking your own money on a deal that dies in diligence.