Stewards of enduring businesses, students of how they work
Intelligence is becoming abundant. What you built remains rare.
Software can now write, plan, schedule and answer. It still can’t show up at a customer’s building and do the job right. We buy companies that can, and we invest in their people, their tools and their growth so they come through this change stronger than they went in.
When thinking gets cheap, doing gets valuable.
Intelligence is getting cheaper and more accessible every year, and a company of any size can now put it to work. Software that once took a team a year now takes a weekend. Anything that can be described in a sentence is turning into a feature that everyone has.
So we asked a simple question: what holds its value when that happens? Our answer is the kind of company you run. Work that has to be done in person, by people who know what they’re doing, for customers who trust them.
That is where we are putting our money, our time and our careers.
Getting cheaper every year
- Analysis, drafting and answers↓
- Custom software↓
- Scheduling and dispatch↓
- Quotes, invoices and paperwork↓
Getting harder to find
- A crew that shows up and does it right↑
- Trust earned inside a customer’s building↑
- Licenses, certifications, a clean safety record↑
- A local name people recommend↑
- Judgment from ten thousand jobs↑
The office catches up to the field.
Most of what slows a service company down happens at a desk: scheduling, dispatch, quoting, billing, chasing paper. Inexpensive intelligence can carry much of that load today, which frees your people for the work only they can do. Very few small companies have started. We know how to get it done, because we have done it.
The field gets new tools.
Machines are learning to work in the physical world: cameras that inspect, crawlers that climb pipe, and robots that lift and carry. It will take years and arrive unevenly. When it does, the companies that already hold the customers, the crews and the know-how will be the ones that put those tools to work. We are building for that day now.
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Your name stays on the door.
You spent decades earning what that name means in your town. We build on it. We don’t paint over it.
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Your people share in our success.
The team that got you here stays. They get the opportunity to grow with us and share in the upside of that growth.
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The profits go back in.
We reinvest in people, tools and growth, year after year, so the company is ready for its next reinvention before it needs one.
We care more about how a company works than what it’s called.
Our experience and our approach carry across many kinds of businesses, so we stay open to a wide range of industries. If your company looks like this, we would like to learn more.
- The work
- Done on site, by skilled people.Service, maintenance, inspection, the trades, and the businesses that keep buildings and equipment running.
- The customers
- Come back year after year.They stay because they trust you, and they tell their neighbors.
- The office
- Still runs on phone calls, spreadsheets and heroics.That is where the first gains are.
- The team
- People you would be proud to hand it to.
- The owner
- Cares what happens after the closing.
People
Leaders, sellers and builders recruited for your company, and a real path upward for the people already in it.
Technology
We put modern tools to work in your office ourselves, side by side with your team. You get the result, without the consultants.
Growth
Most great service companies grow on reputation alone. We invest in sales to accelerate growth and outpace the industry.
We’re building the company the best people choose.
Plenty of people are very good at their jobs. A rare few change the outcome wherever they go.
Curious Hardware is being built, from the first hire, to be where those few want to spend their careers, and to turn out more of them every year. We think it is the most valuable thing we will ever make, and the companies that join us are where it happens.
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A record of winning beats a perfect résumé.
We hire people who have won at things that mattered to them: on a crew, on a team, in a classroom, in a family business. Some of the best operators we know had résumés nobody else knew how to read.
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Real responsibility, early.
Talented people stay where they are trusted with something that matters. Here that means real customers, real numbers and, for those who earn it, a company to lead.
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Development on purpose.
Coaching, apprenticeship and honest feedback are part of the job. Every company in the family is a place where good people get better and the next generation of leaders gets its start.
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When the company wins, it shows up at home.
The people who do the work share in the results. A bonus that sends a technician’s kids to hockey camp is the kind of return we like best.
- A successor worthy of the jobWhen you are ready to step back, the person who steps in is someone we would put our own name behind.
- More room for your peopleBigger jobs, new skills, and a career that doesn’t stop at the edge of one company.
- ReinforcementsWe find exceptional people and put them to work strengthening your sales, your technology and your operations.
I grew up on a factory floor that didn’t make it.
- Companies in the group Elliott built and led
- 100+
- People across those companies
- 5,000
- Annual revenue
- $1B+
- First company as CEO, four years: revenue
- 2×
- Same company, same four years: profit
- 4×
My father joined his family business in the 1970s, and by the early 1980s he was in charge. His company made clothing in New York’s garment district. Thirty-some people worked his sewing floor, many of them immigrants and single parents. Then globalization reached the industry, and his competitors moved production to countries where labor cost a fraction of what it did here. He refused to follow, because he knew what it would mean for the families who depended on him. By the time he changed his mind it was too late. The business closed in 2000, and everyone lost their job anyway.
I think about that floor often. A change larger than globalization is arriving for every small business in the country.
I have spent my career alongside people who do real work. I taught special education on Chicago’s West Side. I managed the front line of an industrial supply business. Then I joined a small IT services company in Pittsburgh, carried a sales bag for a year while its founder taught me the business, and became its CEO. During my tenure, we grew our team, promoted from within, and more than doubled revenue and quadrupled profits. Over the next decade that one company became a family of more than a hundred, growing faster than its industry the whole way, by keeping founders’ names on the door and investing in their people.
Curious Hardware is what I intend to build for the next twenty years. If you have built a company you are proud of and you are thinking about what happens to it next, I would like to hear the story. That is true even if you never plan to sell.
Elliott HymanFounder, Curious Hardware
The first things we’ll ask you.
- How does a job get from the first phone call to a paid invoice?
- Who do your customers ask for by name?
- What breaks when you take a week off?
- What would you fix first with a free month?
- What must never change?
Start with a conversation.
You don’t need a banker, a pitch book or a decision to sell. Tell us about what you built. If it isn’t a fit we will say so plainly, and you will have spent an hour with someone who found your business interesting.
Elliott reads and answers every note himself.