ProService Hawaii

The Deal

Bought By

Ben Godsey and Dustin Sellers

Year

2005

Vehicle

Housatonic Partners, backed by Search Fund Partners, Tom & Dave and Applied Equity

Kind

Services

Honolulu's largest outsourced human-resources firm, running payroll, benefits and compliance for more than two thousand Hawaii businesses.

What Happened Next

Sold a majority to FFL Partners in November 2017, with Godsey and the management team reinvesting for a significant minority stake and Godsey staying on as chief executive. His co-buyer's own firm says the company grew from $13 million to over $200 million of revenue and sold at a valuation above $300 million.

They sold a majority 12 years in, in 2017, and stayed with the company.

The exit ends of journeys like this one, where the buyer has announced the purchase itself, are on Buyers.

Backed by the Same Firms

Method & Source

This record is double-sourced: it joined when the purchase and, where the company has traded on, the exit could both be read in primary accounts.

• Housatonic Partners' own account housatonicpartners.com
• The acquirer's announcement fflpartners.com
• Search Fund Partners' own account searchfunds.net
• Tom & Dave's own account tom-dave.com
• A third party's record of the deal nclpartners.com
• The searchers' own account nclpartners.com
• Applied Equity's own account applied-equity.com

These sources name who runs the business and when the firm invested, rather than saying in a sentence that the searchers bought it. The pairing rests on the row's other sources: a person named beside the company elsewhere. The index host's card, lists the company against its own 2005 investment and its own 2007 exit and names nobody.