Tinman Manifesto
Why the Next Multi-Billion-Dollar Tech Wave Starts With Service Businesses—Not Pitch Decks
In late 2021, I stepped in to rescue an electric last-mile delivery startup on the brink. We blitz-scaled from five to 100 employees on two coasts in eighteen months, powered by venture dollars and sleepless optimism.
Then the Fed raised rates, growth multiples collapsed, and the entire VC scaffolding trembled. As CFOs everywhere yanked "growth at all costs" budgets, I stared at our fresh burn-rate spreadsheet and thought:
Why did we build every capability from scratch?
We could have bought profitable regional delivery firms—companies already cash-flowing—and infused them with automation, AI routing, and modern leadership. Same market impact, radically lower risk, infinitely faster path to scale.
That moment trashed 20 years of "Silicon Valley default." I stopped believing the next great tech story begins in a garage. Today, I'm convinced the biggest upside lives on Main Street—in service businesses ready for a tech metamorphosis.
Shortly after I began exploring this thesis, I teamed up with David Dripps, who brings a decade of experience running major teams at Meta, including Pages, along with a rare combination of banker's discipline and operator's intuition. In 2024, we bought our first company (with our own money) and have proven the effectiveness of this model. Now we are excited to share it with you.
The Valley's Great Delusion: Growth-at-All-Costs in a Cash-Costs-Money World
Silicon Valley perfected the art of subsidizing unprofitable hyper-growth with cheap capital. Between 2008 and 2021, money was nearly free. Valuations hinged on theoretical futures, not present profit.
But the post-ZIRP world plays by 1990s rules:
Cash has an opportunity cost. Equity dilution feels expensive to founders and investors. Public markets reward durable margins over abstract "land grabs."
Traditional VC remains vital for deep-tech moonshots that cannot bootstrap (fusion, quantum). Yet for the vast majority of software plays, the model now destroys more value than it creates. Capital efficiency—not "blitz-scaling"—has become the competitive moat.
The Productivity Paradox: Why Tech Hasn't Moved the Needle
We like to boast that software "eats the world," yet U.S. productivity growth limps along at 1.4%. How can that be? Doesn't cloud infrastructure and generative AI promise god-mode leverage?
The answer: distribution of gains.
Platform startups create enabling tech, but value capture happens only when someone applies those tools to gnarly, domain-specific problems. Your HVAC contractor in Ohio sees marginal benefit from AI until a tech-literate operator rewires their entire workflow. From sales and quoting to dispatch and preventative maintenance—everything needs to be rebuilt around algorithms and data.
That last mile of implementation is messy, boring, "unscalable", and absurdly lucrative for anyone willing to wade in.
Buy → Transform → Amplify: The Tinman Playbook
Tinman Group's playbook is simple but compounding. Each steps gives us another “bite at the apple” along a different dimension:
BUY - Acquire profitable service businesses at 6-8x EBITDA. Value Bite: Multiple Arbitrage
TRANSFORM - Install tech-native leadership, ownership culture, and AI/automation stack. Value Bite: Margin Expansion
AMPLIFY - Use the new data insights and capabilities enabled by our change to launch into adjacent products and markets. Value Bite: New revenue.
PARTNER (Bonus Bite!) - Where possible, co-invest into upstream software vendors that we rely on, then turn ourselves into lighthouse customers. Value Bite: Strategic Equity Upside
Case in point: Mark My Words Media.
A 20-year-old flat-fee digital-marketing agency serving law firms and local trades. Purchased at a single-digit EBITDA multiple with seller financing.
Our first moves were straightforward: implementing basic systems and rolling out professional management practices. These fundamental improvements laid the groundwork for what came next.
When our analyst quit, we didn't just replace them—we built an internal AI research assistant. This technology, combined with a strategic repositioning of the product, allowed us to reestablish key relationships and strengthen our market position.
The result? YoY revenue growth, rising margins, and a pipeline 3× larger than at acquisition. The transformation wasn't a single silver bullet—it was a methodical sequence of operational improvements emphasized by technological leverage.
Talent First: The Leadership Arbitrage No Spreadsheet Shows
Great tech culture isn't "foosball + AWS credits." It's a disciplined ownership model: clear goals, radical transparency, self-managing teams. We have learned—sometimes painfully—that transformation lives or dies with the general manager.
Going forward, we start each vertical search with the leader, not the target company.
Who are we recruiting? Experienced founders and startup VPs who have seen a thing or two and are craving real operating leverage. Leaders precisely like David—who built high-performing teams at both startups and Fortune 100 companies with a distinctive blend of tech fluency and strategic rigor. Our platform handles deal sourcing, financing, and the AI enablement toolkit. What these leaders bring matters more than any technological upgrade.
(If this describes you, please reach out!)
Why Investors Should Care
The capital structure we've built offers something increasingly rare: asymmetric returns with genuine downside protection.
At acquisition, we require a 15%+ unlevered yield. This creates a cushion that makes even base-case scenarios attractive. But our model isn't designed for singles and doubles.
When we layer in technological transformation, those 15% IRR base cases morph into 40%+ outcomes. We've watched it happen repeatedly:
A scheduling algorithm reducing technician downtime
A pricing engine capturing willingness-to-pay across customer segments
An AI-powered recruiting funnel slashing hiring costs while improving retention
Each innovation compounds until the business hardly resembles its original form—except in its economic fundamentals.
We're structured as an evergreen holding company, not a forced-exit fund. Yields come from distributions, recapitalizations, and strategic exits – when timing makes sense, not because a prospectus dictated liquidity seven years from signing. This permanent capital approach lets us build for decades, not quarters.
Perhaps most compelling in today's macroeconomic climate? These businesses serve as inflation hedges. We sell concrete outcomes indexed to the real economy. When inflation rises, so do our prices, because we're selling necessities, not luxuries.
In short, we produce PE-style risk with VC-style opportunity without praying for IPO windows to reopen. It's a model built for the 2025 reality, not the 2021 fantasy.
Acquisitions are funded through a carefully calibrated capital stack: seller notes for motivated founders who believe in our vision, debt secured against predictable cash flows, and—starting Q4 2025—select outside equity for partners who want to ride alongside us.
Every deal begins with a leader already identified and ready to execute the playbook.
Future Verticals
Marketing is just the beginning. There are many service-heavy industries with large target markets, fragmented market share, value-based offerings that are ripe for a transformation like this. As AI matures even more industries will become eligible.
Our goal is to open roughly one new vertical per year, following the frontier of AI as it matures and enables more industries to transform. Each led by an experienced operator with deep knowledge of industry paired with our playbooks and unique technology platform.
Over the next decade we believe we can not only create billions of wealth with this strategy but also demonstrate to the world what good looks like in terms of how people and AI will thrive together.
We chose the Tinman from the Wizard of Oz because he was a machine with a heart. Like the Tinman, the best companies that generate best returns will likewise combine people and agents in a way that amplifies their unique strengths.
A Manifesto for Builders
Think the only interesting problems live inside VC-funded software companies? Look beyond Sand Hill Road's limited imagination.
Consider Nivoda. As one of their first investors, I worked closely with this jewelry marketplace as they transformed the sleepy B2B gemstone trade. Though they were a new venture, not an acquisition, their approach exemplifies our thesis perfectly: they brought modern marketplace dynamics to an industry operating like it was 1975. Within three years, they connected diamond suppliers in Antwerp and Tel Aviv with retailers in 100+ countries. We've incorporated elements of their playbook in our own portfolio. Proving digital transformation doesn't need a Series A. Today the company is venture funded and growing fast, but off the back of a proven business model.
Or look at Cava. Beginning as a Mediterranean restaurant chain, they evolved into a tech-optimized operational juggernaut. Their data-driven approach to menu design, store location, and throughput optimization turned what could have been a commoditized food service model into a company that exited at a $4.7B IPO valuation. Not a tech company by Silicon Valley's narrow definition, but their tech-forward operations created more shareholder value than 99% of software startups founded the same year.
These aren't isolated examples. Across America, hundreds of HVAC contractors, logistics providers, legal firms, and specialty-care clinics quietly compound at 25%+ annual growth with zero venture backing. They apply technological leverage to boring, essential services that no one wants to Instagram but everyone needs to consume.
The frontier has migrated. It's no longer about code alone, but code tailored to and multiplied by operations. That's where the next generation of fortunes will be minted. While others chase the latest AI hallucination feature, we're applying these tools to businesses that move physical things and serve real people.
The upside isn't theoretical. It shows up in your P&L.
A Call to Three Audiences
This model needs three distinct groups to succeed. Consider this your personal invitation from David and me.
OPERATORS. Can you lead a P&L, inspire teams, and bring a tech friendly mindset with deep knowledge of your industry, and now looking for the next opportunity that will help you ride the wave of AI with enough leverage on your skills to be worth your time? We offer genuine autonomy and resources to match.
We'll hand you the keys to a vertical with the mandate to transform it. Your sandbox will be a profitable company on Day 1, augmented by our transformation toolkit and cross-portfolio expertise. The upside isn't a lottery ticket. You receive a direct share of the value you create through phantom equity that pays real cash when hitting predefined milestones.
BUSINESS OWNERS. Considering an exit? We represent a distinct alternative to both strategic acquirers and financial sponsors.
We buy for the long-term and maintain founding legacies. Your company becomes the foundation of a tech-enabled dynasty, not a line item in a roll-up spreadsheet destined for "cost synergies." Many of our sellers stay involved as advisors, board members, or collaborators. They take chips off the table while watching their life's work evolve into something even more valuable.
INVESTORS. Are you hunting asymmetric returns grounded in real cash flow? Tinman Group represents a new category. Somewhere between private equity and venture capital—deliberately designed to capture the best elements of both.
We're opening our first external capital tranche this year after proving the model with proprietary capital. You won't wait seven years to see if a theoretical exit materializes. Distributions from profitable operations will offer liquidity within the first 24 months.
Email us at MachinesWithHeart@tinman.group or DM on X (@tinmangroup). Let's compound real value—out where the servers meet the street.