Matt McGrath owned Systems Engineering for 37 years, a 100% employee-owned Managed Services Provider. With a 100% employee-owned business, there is a different kind of buy-in from the employees, culturally and financially. For Systems Engineering, this made a sale seem not possible, or not worth it. If they were to lose the culture and the employees, the clients would follow. It was important that if Matt were to consider a sale, it was with the right buyer. There was a list of requirements for Systems Engineering’s future potential buyer: keeping the philosophical buy-in from the employees, maintaining brand and legacy, ensuring client retention, and building on the rapid growth they achieved.
Matt then met Evergreen. Evergreen, being culturally aligned with Systems Engineering, felt like an opportunity to sell without destroying the community of employees and clients he had built. Evergreen could partner with Matt to expedite the growth they had already built, but not through gutting the talent he’d worked so hard to employ over 37 years. Watch Matt’s full story below, and how, as a different type of MSP, he navigated a successful sale: