Testimonials
Organization name | Website URL | People | Bio | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Heritage Physician Partners | https://www.amg-gi.com/ | 1 Person | Sekou Calliste spent his career moving capital across continents (Deutsche Bank, Citi, the IFC), financing businesses from New York to Trinidad to Latin America. Eventually, he stopped financing other people's companies and acquired one of his own.We caught him at the tail end of his search, just before he closed on Heritage Physician Partners, a gastroenterology practice and ambulatory surgery center platform serving North Carolina. He's now CEO of Heritage Physician Partners as well as President and Chief Administrative Officer of Heritage’s Atlantic Medical Group, actively standing both up.Sekou is also devoted to building youth soccer programs at the elementary school level, focused on getting kids who wouldn't otherwise find the sport on the field. The same values and strategy carry into how he scales healthcare practices: provide structure, build confidence, and get in early for long-game empowerment.TBD came in as a gap investor, an exception to our norm. What kept Dmitri more invested than the deal required was Sekou himself.At 6\'8\", Sekou will tell you the hardest part of search wasn't the deal; it was the middle seat. | |
| Oaklin Lane | https://www.oaklinlane.com/ | 1 Person | Chris Callander grew up in an underfunded school system in Louisiana, the kind of place where the support resources he now builds for a living simply didn't exist.He's now CEO of Oaklin Lane, a pediatric therapy practice providing physical, occupational, and speech therapy to children and their families in the Dallas-Fort Worth community. Chris is a TBD CEO-in-Residence, meaning we backed his full search and remain his sole investor. It's the kind of bet Dmitri loves to make: on kids getting the care they deserve and on Chris being exactly the person to make sure they do.On weekends, Chris is logging flight hours toward his private pilot's license in a Cessna 172. What started as a bucket-list item has become a genuine obsession. The focus a cockpit demands has a way of making everything else go quiet. It's not unlike what good pediatric therapy asks of a clinician—full presence, no shortcuts, a child counting on you to get it right.He does all of this alongside his wife, Dr. Kate Callander, and their German Shepherd, Lola, who treats every new person she meets like she's been waiting her whole life to meet them. | |
| Alta Peak Roofing | https://altapeakroofing.com/ | 1 Person | Ben Shuford grew up in the Appalachian foothills of Hickory, North Carolina, where practicality wasn't a philosophy; it was just how things got done.He eventually found his way to building a behavioral healthcare company in North Carolina serving the collegiate population, founding and exiting before joining Alpine Investors as a CEO-in-Residence and later in COO roles across two roll-up strategies. He learned how fragmented industries come together, and why all too often they don't.He's now CEO of Alta Peak Holdings, acquiring and scaling roofing businesses across the country. In less than eighteen months, he's grown from four markets to twelve. The Appalachian work ethic didn't go anywhere.TBD is invested in Alta Peak and in Ben, exactly the kind of builder we live to back.He lives in the stunning state of Utah with his wife and two children. On a good powder day, you might not find him working at his desk. On a bad one, you definitely will. | |
| Central Dux Collective | https://www.centraldux.com/ | 2 People | Ricky and Ruben Anzures chose to partner deliberately, not quickly. They are brothers, but that is not why they work together. They work together because between them is a rare combination: systems thinking, operational depth, high-stakes legal and financial experience, and the patience to wait for the right deal rather than just the next one. They also happen to be two of the more creatively alive people in any room they walk into, which turns out to matter more in this work than most people know or want to admit.Ricky clerked for the Chief Justice of Mexico's Supreme Court, where he introduced micro-econometric analysis to constitutional decisions and worked on some of the country's most consequential legal reforms. He then moved into private equity, sharpening his instincts for what makes a business worth building. He's also a competitive triathlete, a student of stories—film, theater, tv, all of it—and is quietly working on writing some of his own one day.HIs big brother, Ruben, has advised the CEOs of two of Mexico's largest institutions, helped scale a fintech startup from 90,000 to over a million users in under a year, and once ranked second in junior tennis in all of Mexico. In his quieter moments, he draws—not casually, but with the kind of slow, deliberate attention that teaches you to see things more as they are and less as what you think they are. It is, he'll tell you, not so different from diligence.Their search, backed by TBD, is well underway. Some partnerships have an exit. This one was born without one. | |
| Cinnamon Hill Partners | https://www.cinnamon-hill.com/ | 1 Person | Justin Outslay grew up in the Pacific Northwest in a family of small business owners and his now physician brother, who showed him early on what it looks like to build something in service of others. Both paths stayed with him.Before that, he had a dream: play Division One college football. He achieved that dream, earned Academic All-American honors, and along the way played against two future Super Bowl winners. The discipline that got him on that field is the same discipline he brought to investment consulting afterward, where he advised institutional investors on over $4.5 billion in private credit commitments.Then came Booth, a deep dive into healthcare operations, and a growing conviction that the best thing he could do was show up for physicians the way his brother shows up for his patients, taking care of everything on the business side so healthcare providers can focus on just that—providing care.He founded Cinnamon Hill Partners to do exactly that: acquire and grow a single exceptional healthcare business, partnering with physicians who want their work to outlast them. It's personal. It always has been.TBD backs Justin because conviction like his isn't something you can teach or manufacture. When we see it that clearly, the decision makes itself. | |
| Betzler Life Story Funeral Homes | https://betzlerlifestory.com/ | 2 People | Cole West and John Baker met in high school band. That was the beginning. What came after was two careers spent building the kind of operational and financial instincts that make a business last, and a friendship that eventually became a partnership with a name: Cambridge Avenue Partners.Cole comes from a family that builds things. His grandfather was a funeral director in Florida. His father ran a medical practice for over twenty years. His aunt still runs the family funeral home today. When Cole started a grocery delivery service in college, humbling himself on the realities of door-to-door sales and supplier relationships, he was following a bloodline. After Deloitte and years leading software product launches at Indeed, the pull back to something personal and rooted was inevitable. He's an avid golfer who still takes annual trips with his dad, which tells you something about his reverence for what came before. Not many millennials still take annual trips with their dads. Fewer still end up in the business of continuing their family’s legacy.John grew up in Michigan with Cole, watching his father and uncle build a direct mail business from scratch. At Babson, he co-founded a company of his own, learning hard lessons about co-founder dynamics and financial planning before he'd ever heard of a cap table. He spent seven years at Wells Fargo rising from analyst to Vice President in commercial real estate, underwriting and structuring debt across multiple asset classes. These days he channels his grandfather's carpentry spirit into weekend home improvement projects and tinkering with his car. The results, he'll tell you, suggest he absorbed more of the passion than the skill, but we bet he's being modest.We sat down with them while their search was still underway. Since then, they've acquired Betzler Life Story Funeral Homes, a community bedrock that requires something of its leaders that most industries don't: genuine care. TBD backed Cole and John because that's exactly what they bring to the sacred work of celebrating life in times of loss. | |
| Lone Rock Partners | http://lonerockpartners.com | 1 Person | Drew Ricciardone is a seventh-generation Arkansan whose family has been building small businesses across Texas and Arkansas since the 1800s. He grew up watching his mother and grandmother run a women's clothing boutique in Little Rock, learning early that a business done right is also a community served well.After years at UPS spanning healthcare strategy, public affairs, lobbying, and a bonus chapter supporting early-stage startups and political campaigns, Drew came to Harvard Business School with a clear thesis: find one great American small business and pour himself into it. That search is now underway through Lone Rock Partners, backed by TBD.When not searching as Lone Rock, Drew is methodically navigating his way through every state, national park, and major league ballpark in the country. Forty-six states, twenty-four national parks, fourteen ballparks. He is not in a hurry. He is also not stopping until every box is checked, which, knowing Drew, is not a metaphor. | |
| <No Organization name> | <No Website URL> | 1 Person | Frankie Costa is a Pittsburgh native from three generations of small business founders, spanning blue-collar trades and white-collar services alike. The through line was never the industry. It was the conviction that building something that matters in people's everyday lives is the whole point.From Yale Law to Harvard Business, this scholar-turned-CEO clerked, published legal scholarship, and ran the Yale International Relations Association before anyone would have guessed where he was headed.Frankie went on to lead two HVAC/R platforms now exceeding $1 billion in combined revenue, most recently founding and scaling Helios Service Partners into a national leader with 1,000 team members across 40+ states. Skadden, Alpine as CEO-in-Residence, and now his own search: each step further from the lecture hall, deeper into work whose impact people feel every single day.He made room for TBD not because he needed the capital, but because he knew the search and the build ahead would be more fruitful with Dmitri in his corner.At 14, on a summer exchange in Nanjing, Frankie bought a Chinese yo-yo from a street vendor and became, for a period of time, genuinely good at it. He has range. | |
| Adolescent Wellness academy | https://adolescentwellnessacademy.com/ | 2 People | Camila Medeiros and Dustin Johnson have built a life that moves. Between them, they've worked in investment banking, private equity, and consulting across the globe. Somewhere along the way they decided to get married to each other and join the search community together.They co-founded Viva Partners as a search fund with a single thesis: acquire and grow a purpose-driven organization for the long term. That winding, surprising path led them to South Florida and behavioral health, where they now co-lead Adolescent Wellness Academy and Principles Recovery Center, serving teens and adults navigating substance use and mental health challenges across the region.Camila leads people, culture, and expansion. She shepherds the mission and fosters a culture of curiosity in the work their dedicated team does together every day. With her personal yoga practice keeping her grounded and her call to live a life of service guiding her, she's lived on every continent but Antarctica, ultimately choosing the Florida Peninsula, this work, and this community very much on purpose.Dustin runs strategy, finance, and growth. Back in the day, he spent his college summers guiding fishing trips in Canada’s Northwest Territories. He's since traded remote rivers for a backyard pizza oven, quietly perfecting his pie craft with the same rigor he brings to building Joint Commission-accredited behavioral health infrastructure.It’s no surprise Camila and Dustin bring their shared intentionality home with them, raising kids in Fort Lauderdale and building on two incredibly meaningful fronts at once. TBD backed them because their union is rare. They uniquely know how to build things designed to last: a business, a family, a community of compassionate care for the next generation’s hearts and minds. |
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