Most MSP founders assume that selling means handing over the keys, their brand evaporates, the team gets reshuffled, and the thing they spent two decades building slowly stops feeling like theirs.
Mike Hopkins felt that he had the best job in the world, he didn’t want anything to change after selling, so he did not want to sell initially. Decentralization changed that for him – he sold DEVsource to Evergreen in September 2025, stayed on as CEO, and six months later the business had grown its EBITDA 1.5x.
Read below on how Mike and the team did this in partnership with Evergreen and Lyra.
Mike founded DEVsource in Murray, Kentucky in 2001. Over the next two decades he built it into a technology services business with a loyal customer base and a team that knew its clients by name. By 2025 he had a decision most successful founders eventually face: what comes next, and who gets to steward what you built.
Mike wasn’t looking to sell, he wanted to keep the best job in the world, and did not want to erase what he had built.
“I really wasn’t looking to sell. I’m 53. I still have a lot of interesting work ahead of me, so my initial reaction was, why would I do this? I have the best job in the world. I have an awesome team. I built a company that mostly ran without me, and we were profitable and growing year over year.” – Mike Hopkins
So when the opportunity came up, it was about what would happen to his business afterwards. As Mike put it, as the founder he carried a certain legacy, for his clients and, most importantly, his employees.
Mike turned to a peer group member for some advice, who told him “this is your largest asset, you get one chance to do this, shouldn’t you at least get a second opinion?” So he did. DEVsource engaged with another private equity backed buyer and ended up with two premium offers on the table. What Mike hoped would make the decision easier made it harder. Two strong offers meant the choice came down to something other than the number.
Founders in his position hear the same pitch from most buyers. Growth, resources, scale. What they don’t always hear is what happens to the people, the culture, and the customer relationships once the deal closes. Too often the answer is a merge, a rebrand, and a countdown to the next transaction. Mike wanted a partner who would grow the business without gutting what made it work.
DEVsource joined Lyra Technology Group, Evergreen’s community of managed services companies. The model was built on decentralization, meaning his legacy would be preserved, alongside his clients and employees. It also gave him the optionality to “keep the best job ever.”
Mike is direct about why Evergreen won out over the other offer:
“What it came down to ultimately was the decentralized aspect of the Evergreen deal. It just made so much more sense to me, particularly since I wanted to continue on in this business. I knew that would be the best approach for our employees, and for our clients.”
That promise showed up in the org chart, Mike stayed on as CEO and Trent Ballard stayed as COO, bringing more than 16 years of experience into DEVsource’s next phase. Rather than stripping talent out, Lyra added it: Erin Bolton joined post-close as VP of Growth to lead new logo sales.
Mike wasn’t sure how much longer he wanted in the business, but communicated that to Evergreen. A condition of the deal was for Mike to stay on as long as he would like, and Evergreen was flexible with that. Mike knew what he wanted out of the deal process, and that helped him in the long run.
This is what independence, not isolation, looks like in practice, DEVsource keeps its name, its team, and its day-to-day autonomy. What it gains is a community of 300+ business leaders, a shared value creation playbook, and the capital to move faster than it could alone.
Six months after close, the numbers tell the story:
None of that came from cutting corners or cutting people, it came from giving a strong business the support to do more of what it already did well.
If you’re a founder weighing what comes next for the company you built, that’s the question worth asking any buyer. Not just what they’ll pay, but what they’ll preserve.
Thinking about your own next chapter? See how Evergreen partners with founders.