Jordan Dubin: Acquiring and Building a $200M Garage Door Empire at 27

In the world of ETA and private equity, the timeline for success is usually measured in years, if not decades. Jordan Dubin, however, is operating on a different clock. At just 27 years old, Dubin and his two partners, Joe Delaney and Sean Slazyk, have built Guild Garage Group, a garage door repair platform that hit $200 million in revenue and $30 million in EBITDA by the end of 2024.

What makes this feat even more staggering is that their first acquisition only closed in March of the same year.

Dubin’s resume reads like a roadmap of elite finance: Harvard undergrad, Goldman Sachs investment banking, and private equity at L Catterton. Yet, his success isn't defined by financial engineering or boardroom maneuvering. Instead, it is built on handwritten letters, middle-seat flights to secondary markets, and a philosophy of radical transparency.

Dubin identified the "last frontier" of residential services and executed a hyper-growth rollup strategy that has outpaced even his own ambitious projections.

Dubin’s journey into the world of aggregation began long before his time at Goldman Sachs. At 19, he interned for Matt Perelman and Alex Sloan of Garnett Station Partners. At the time, they were operating out of a townhouse, building a portfolio of Burger King franchises.

"They were like gods in my eyes," Dubin recalled in one appearance on Acquiring Minds Podcast. "I just so much appreciated and loved how they formed these real relationships and bonds with all these different families and owner-operators."

This experience planted a seed. Dubin realized that while the financial modeling was necessary, the magic of consolidation lay in the human element: building trust with sellers across the country.

After Harvard, Dubin followed the traditional path to Goldman Sachs and then to L Catterton, a consumer-focused private equity firm. There, he met his future partners, Joe and Sean. The trio spent years working on "buy and build" strategies in veterinary clinics, collision repair, and HVAC. They saw firsthand the power of consolidation, but they also noticed a gap in the market.

Large private equity firms were paying massive premiums for platforms with over $20 million in EBITDA, but they weren't willing to do the dirty work of starting from scratch. They wouldn't "stack pennies" to build the initial scale.

Dubin, Delaney, and Slazyk decided they would.

The trio knew they wanted to build a platform in residential services, but they needed a category that wasn't already saturated. HVAC and plumbing were already flooded with private equity capital. They needed a "Goldilocks" industry: large enough to scale, fragmented enough to consolidate, but seemingly too small for the big players to bother with yet.

They landed on the residential garage door industry. The statistics were undeniable:

Crucially, the industry had a "precedent transaction." A1 Garage Door Service, founded by Tommy Mello, had grown organically to $100 million in revenue and sold to Cortec Group for approximately 21x EBITDA. This proved two things to Dubin: first, that a garage door company could reach scale; and second, that institutional capital was hungry for these assets.

"There was no next platform in garage at the time," Dubin explained in one appearance on the Built to Sell Podcast. "If you wanted exposure to this industry, you had to own this asset. Supply and demand created the perfect dynamic to have a platform trade for a super premium multiple."

With a thesis in hand and $35 million in initial equity raised, the partners needed to find deals. Instead of relying on expensive databases or generic email blasts, Dubin went analog.

"We would write handwritten letters in large craft envelopes... If they were white or yellow, they could be mistaken for the IRS," Dubin recalls. "But if they were craft and you handwrote the name, an owner would pick it up and be like oh this is my niece or nephew sending me their art project."

They sent between 700 and 800 letters, achieving a response rate of 10-15%. This led to three of their first five deals.

Once on the phone, Dubin avoided the polished private equity pitch. He leaned into his identity as a "city kid" who needed help. "I am going to be so authentic... that it's borderline jeopardizing to the pitch," Dubin says. He would tell owners, "I’m from New York City... If I fired you and took over your business, it would go to zero."

This humility, combined with a willingness to fly anywhere at a moment's notice for dinner, allowed Guild to win deals against firms offering higher multiples.

Guild’s model is not a 100% buyout. They acquire a majority stake (typically 65-80%) and require the owner to roll the remaining equity (20-35%) into the new platform.

This structure aligns incentives. The owner takes significant chips off the table immediately, usually at a single-digit multiple (e.g., 5x-7x EBITDA). However, they retain a stake in a much larger entity that, if executed correctly, could eventually trade for a mid-to-high teens multiple (like the 21x A1 transaction).

"If the business grows... you have the potential, even on a 20% minority share to make two to 3x what you made in that upfront liquidity event," Dubin recounts telling owners.

Additionally, owners receive quarterly cash flow distributions based on their ownership percentage, allowing them to maintain the "entrepreneurial feel" of excess cash flow while building long-term wealth.

Guild employs a "Land and Expand" strategy. They acquire "Beachhead" companies, premier regional players with $5 million+ in revenue and 15%+ EBITDA margins. They then acquire smaller "tuck-in" businesses (sometimes as small as one or two trucks) to fold into these beachheads.

The integration strategy is highly specific:

Back-Office Unification: All partner companies must migrate to a unified tech stack: ServiceTitan for CRM, Sage for accounting, and ADP for payroll. This allows Guild’s executive team to monitor performance and assist with financials at scale.

Consumer-Facing Independence: The local brands remain untouched. The trucks, uniforms, and local reputation stay the same. Dubin believes that painting the country with one brand destroys local brand equity. "To assume what would work in Phoenix would work in Minneapolis is crazy," he says.

This approach creates "industrial logic," i.e., the ability to centralize procurement for doors, motors, and insurance, driving down costs without disrupting the local customer relationship.

Despite their rapid pace, Guild is disciplined. They reject businesses that do not fit specific criteria:

In less than a year, Guild has closed 14 deals, proving that even in a high-interest-rate environment, the right thesis combined with relentless execution can yield massive results.

Dubin attributes 50% of the success to luck (timing) and 50% to his partners. But the reality is that Guild found a gap in the market that required a specific blend of financial sophistication and blue-collar relationship building.

Jordan Dubin isn't just buying garage door companies; he's building the largest residential services platform in the country, one craft envelope at a time.