Founder Friday: From HAZMAT Teams, Family Portfolios, and $2B in Alternatives 🎣

If you’ve ever underwritten an operator, you know the tell.

It isn’t the deck. It’s whether they can answer a question you didn’t send in advance.

The founders in this issue can. Not because they prepared, but because they spent a career inside the thing they’re now building.

Twenty-two years on a HAZMAT team. Three decades raising alternatives. Seven years watching capital get allocated from a board seat.

The expertise came first. The company came after.

Welcome back to Startup Deal Desk!

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John Williams has responded to chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear incidents for the Houston Fire Department since 2004, and still does. He trains fire personnel in HAZMAT handling and incident command.

For nine yrs he ran health, safety, and environment at Sabine Storage & Operations as Corporate HSE Director, writing policy and building the audit and emergency response programs for an energy storage operator.

He founded Williams Safety & Rescue in 2020.

Robert Gandy takes the investor meetings, bringing two decades of investment banking and energy deal finance in Houston.

• BAAS in Fire Protection Technology, BS in Safety Management

• Crews staffed with Houston-area firefighters, EMTs, and paramedics

• 1,086 consecutive days without a lost-time injury across client sites

• Total Recordable Incident Rate of 0.00, no OSHA citations in 24 months

Schedule an Intro Call | Company LinkedIn

John Gallagher spent three decades raising capital for alternatives across Morgan, Grenfell, Banc of America Securities, Deutsche Bank, Gartmore Group, George Weiss Associates, and LeoWealth.

The through-line of the career is distribution, getting private product in front of the people best placed to judge it. LeagueMed points that at clinicians.

The founding team puts Richard Purcell on origination and diligence, Paul and Steve Cella on physician relationships, Matthew Gallagher on the platform, and Kate Morgan on operations and marketing.

At a glance

• $2B+ raised in alternatives across three decades

• Princeton, AB in History; Oxford, M.Lit in Modern History

• Richard Purcell: 40 yrs in life sciences, 17 running clinical research organizations

• Matthew Gallagher: 30 yrs in design and technology, including IBM’s commerce platform

• On Diag-Nose, around 30 members participated in a larger $7M raise with repeat venture participation

• Founding member of HELIX, New Jersey’s life sciences exchange

Schedule an Intro Call | Company LinkedIn

Keaton Lippman learned the business underwriting and deploying capital inside a large family-affiliated commercial real estate development portfolio, across project development and equity raising in multiple asset classes.

What he kept meeting was accredited investors and family offices funneled into blind-pool structures with no visibility at the deal level. He and Owen Stayer-Bauer built 39 Capital against that.

Stayer came up through Integrated Business Planning and operational governance, and now owns underwriting discipline and capital allocation as CFO and CIO.

At a glance

• Involved in $525M of total project development since formation, participation rather than realized exits

• Seven years of board-level exposure to institutional capital allocation, plus time inside a family office structure

• Partners include Pelican Builders, Allen Harrison Company, and D’Agostino Companies

• D’Agostino Companies has developed 37 projects since relocating its headquarters to Houston in 2000

• Focusing on Texas and Florida markets with current D’Agostino project in Katy, TX (Houston area)

Connect with Keaton | Company LinkedIn

The pattern across this week’s Deal Desk is easy to miss.

Different industries, same starting point.

Time in the field → judgment you can’t hire → deals that close

The question this cycle isn’t: who has the best thesis?

It’s who has actually done the work, and can they still do it at scale?

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Disclaimer: This newsletter is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice or an offer to buy or sell securities. Private investments carry risk, are illiquid, and are intended for accredited investors only. Investments involve the potential loss of principal. Returns, quarterly distributions, and IRRs are estimates and not guaranteed. Past performance is not indicative of future results. Always perform your own due diligence before making any investment decisions.