Matt Hultquist · Founder
Twenty years analyzing businesses. Ten years owning them.
I spent a decade on a six-person team running a concentrated value portfolio with more than four billion dollars in it. Then I moved to Charlotte and started buying companies with our own capital instead of recommending them with someone else's.
That order matters. Most people who advise on the sale of a business have never had to make payroll at one. I have done both, in that sequence, and the second part changed how I think about the first.
What we own and operate
Hillandale buys and holds businesses with one to ten million dollars of EBITDA across the Southeast. These are not case studies from a pitch deck. They are companies I answer for.
Horizon Roofing & Restoration
Acquired December 2023. I took the chief executive seat in June 2026. Commercial and residential roofing across Charlotte, Greensboro, Raleigh and the Carolinas.
Polysonics
Partner since June 2024. Sixty-five years in acoustics, audio-visual and technology design — over a hundred architect relationships and 250 active commercial projects.
Touchstone Electric
Investor and advisor since March 2025. A residential and commercial electrical roll-up across Charlotte, Raleigh, Greenville and Columbia, scaling toward twenty million in sales.
Sidekick Therapy Partners
Investor since 2018. Paediatric speech, occupational and physical therapy across Tennessee and, since the 2024 Speechcenter acquisition, North Carolina.
Aiwyn
Founding investor, 2020 to 2024. Billing and invoicing software for accounting firms, valued at four hundred million dollars in its most recent round alongside KKR and Bessemer.
HC Government Realty Trust
Board member and head of acquisitions, 2018 to 2021. Thirty-plus federal GSA properties, more than three hundred million in assets.
Before Hillandale
Two decades in public markets, learning to take a business apart on paper before I ever had to run one.
Sasco Capital · 2006–2016
One of six people on the investment team overseeing more than four billion dollars for public funds, corporations and endowments — a concentrated thirty-stock long-only value portfolio. My work was finding good businesses in the middle of a restructuring, a transformation or a change of management. Positions included Home Depot, CVS, TJX and International Paper.
GAMCO Investors · 2001–2004
Vice president and assistant to Mario Gabelli, reviewing equity portfolios with the chief investment officer. Co-led the launch of the Gabelli Dividend & Income Trust on the New York Stock Exchange — a 1.6 billion dollar raise, then a record for a closed-end equity offering, and now around three billion.
Private Business Roundtable
A thousand owners, three markets
I started the Roundtable in Charlotte in January 2024 and it now runs in Greensboro, Winston-Salem and Raleigh as well — more than a thousand owners, operators and investors in Carolina private businesses. It is the reason I usually know who is buying in your sector before you ask.
Columbia and Wake Forest
MBA from Columbia Business School's value investing programme — sourcing, fundamental analysis, modelling and valuation, presented to working hedge fund managers. Before that, a B.S. in finance from the Calloway School at Wake Forest, where I co-founded the investment club and the Wake on Wall Street alumni network, now over a thousand people across the major financial institutions.
Where else I spend the time
Board member at Riverbound Partners. Board member and emerging-leader roundtable lead at 100x Forum. Advisory board at Freedom Communities in West Charlotte and the Social Capital Collective at UrbanPromise. Deacon and mercy team at Hope Community Church. Mentor with Telemachus since 2011, and previously a board member at Charlotte Fellows.
| Years investing | 25 |
| Years owning operating businesses | 10 |
| Assets overseen at Sasco Capital | $4B+ |
| Closed-end offering co-led at GAMCO | $1.6B |
| Target EBITDA range | $1–10M |
| Owners in the Private Business Roundtable | 1,000+ |
The thing I did not understand from a desk in Connecticut is how much of a small business sits in one person's head. You cannot model it. You find it the first time you own one and something breaks. That is most of what I bring to a sale now — I know which of your numbers a buyer will not believe, because I have been on the wrong side of that conversation with my own company.
Matt Hultquist · Charlotte, North Carolina