Road To Carry is proudly supported by Reef Pass Investors
Hi all - this past week was a bit of a whirlwind. First, getting stuck in Denver because of the NYC snowstorm. Then an overnight flight back to New York…followed by another overnight flight to London.
I landed in London to find the airline had lost my luggage. And now, writing this from Switzerland!
Private equity might be spreadsheets and board decks on the surface. But behind the scenes, it’s a lot of delayed flights, lost bags, and late night conversations.
Left: it was great to see many Road To Carry readers at the London conference held by RollUpEurope.
Right: despite all the travel nightmares, this view of the Swiss mountains was worth it.
This week, I thought we’d try a new newsletter format, distilling the latest conversation I had with Robert Irving, who:
Founded Better Fire, a fire and life safety services company (specializing in the design, installation, inspection, testing, and maintenance of fire protection systems) at the age of 26
Sold to Summit Fire (then BlackRock-backed, now owned by BDT & MSD Partners)
Stayed on as VP and helped execute a high-velocity roll-up (2–3 acquisitions per month)
Now building his own independent sponsor platform investing in mission-critical field services, including his first acquisition in power generators to build the next empire
Speaking of empire building…if you have a serial acquisition thesis,
Reef Pass is a US based investment partnership that specializes in launching serial acquisition and HoldCo platforms (most often launched by ex-PE professionals).
Reef Pass brings decades of experience building acquisition platforms and flexible mandate across incubation and growth stages with a long-term capital base.
If you've ever thought seriously about launching your own acquisition platform, I'd love to hear your thesis!
Note: this partnership does not impact editorial independence.
State of Play
If you’re new to field services roll-ups, the single most important concept from this conversation is simple:
Financial engineering can amplify a business, but it can’t create one. The work is operational.
I sat down with Robert Irving, ex-VP of Summit Fire and founder of Buffalo Growth Partners, to talk about what it really takes to build a services platform the right way.
We talked about:
Why “durability and sustainability” matter more than quick synergy math
The most overlooked part of roll-ups: combining org charts
Why technology is the #1 limiting factor in services platforms
How to build repeatable sales (and why most sales teams aren’t repeatable)
Sourcing: how to build a snowball after the first deal (and why content helps)
If you prefer to listen to this interview, you can find it here
Field services is one of those corners of the economy that most people overlook until you realize it quietly powers everything: safety, uptime, compliance, and the “stuff that can’t break.”
Private equity has poured capital into services roll-ups over the last decade, but most analysis is still written from the outside:
fragmentation + recurring revenue + tuck-ins + synergy math.
The hard part is what happens after the deal closes:
What breaks
What slows you down
What actually creates value (and what destroys it)