Junko Sheehan's $225M Roll-Up Strategy for UNAVETS

Your First Startup Failure Might Be the Blueprint For Your Next Success

Most founder stories focus on a single, explosive success. This is not one of those stories. Junko Sheehan’s journey to raising $225M for UNAVETS, one of Europe’s largest veterinary platforms, was paved by the painful collapse of her first company. That failure taught her the brutal lessons of capital structure and board dynamics—lessons that became the playbook for her next venture.

Sheehan’s story offers a powerful, alternative model to the typical venture-backed tech startup: the private equity-backed services roll-up. It’s a strategy built on financial discipline, operational excellence, and a deep understanding of what investors—and the businesses you’re acquiring—actually want.

Lesson 1: The Scars of the Dot-Com Bust Are a Founder's Best Teacher

Long before UNAVETS, Sheehan founded a gift-giving platform during the late-90s dot-com boom. At 27, she was on a board with Fortune 500 CEOs. The company got coverage on CNN, Bloomberg, and Forbes. Six months later, it was dead.

The business ran out of money. Sheehan wanted to raise more capital, but her board outvoted her. She was forced to lay off 30 employees and shut down. This experience burned two non-obvious lessons into her mind:

Undercapitalization is a choice, not just a circumstance. Running out of money isn't just bad luck; it's a failure of strategy and persuasion. You must not only know when you need to raise, but also be able to convince your board and investors to act before it’s too late. · Board control is not just about equity percentage. A charismatic founder can lose control of a company even with significant ownership if they don't understand the motivations and levers of their board members. The ex-CFO of Excite on her board saw the macro-environment turning and chose to conserve cash, overriding her desire to fundraise.

Instead of immediately starting something new, Sheehan decided to learn the language of the people who had outmaneuvered her. She went to Wharton for her MBA and then became an investment banker at Bear Stearns, Morgan Stanley, and UBS, working on over $30B in transactions.

This is the critical pivot. Where many founders would jump back into the startup game, she took the time to master the other side of the table. She learned how institutional investors value companies, structure deals, and use financial instruments to achieve their goals. This financial toolkit would become her primary advantage.

Lesson 2: The Investment Banker's Playbook for Entrepreneurship

Working in M&A isn't a common path for founders, but it’s the perfect training ground for a roll-up strategy. A roll-up involves buying many small, independent businesses in a fragmented market (like local vet clinics, dental offices, or HVAC installers) and combining them into one large, efficient platform.

Sheehan’s time in banking gave her three unfair advantages for executing this playbook with UNAVETS:

Valuation Discipline: In a roll-up, you might do 40+ acquisitions a year. You can’t overpay. Investment banking teaches you to build rigorous valuation models based on real cash flow (EBITDA), not just speculative future growth. You learn to walk away from a deal if the numbers don’t work. · Understanding Debt: VCs primarily use equity. Private equity, which backed UNAVETS, uses a combination of equity and debt. Sheehan’s background allowed her to comfortably use debt as a tool. UNAVETS secured a €116M debt and acquisition financing line from Ares Management. This is essentially a war chest specifically for buying clinics, allowing the company to move faster than competitors who might need to raise equity for every purchase. · Structuring Deals: Acquiring a business isn’t like closing a customer. You need to negotiate terms, structure earn-outs, and understand the legal and financial plumbing of a transaction. Having done this for massive corporations gave Sheehan the reps to do it efficiently for dozens of small clinics.

Executing the Roll-Up: The UNAVETS Model

UNAVETS is now a dominant force with 129 practices across Spain and Portugal. The company is growing at over 100% year-over-year by acquiring more than 40 clinics annually. This isn’t just growth for growth's sake; it's a deliberate strategy to professionalize a fragmented industry.

The Value Proposition is Everything

You can’t just buy businesses; the owners have to want to sell to you. Veterinarians are mission-driven professionals, not just business operators. Many are tired of the administrative burdens of running a practice: marketing, HR, payroll, procurement, and IT.

UNAVETS’s core offer is a "shared services model." They tell clinic owners:

"Let us handle the back-office headaches. We’ll invest in your equipment, provide advanced training for your staff, and give you access to a network of specialists. You get to go back to doing what you love: practicing medicine."

This is a powerful proposition. It’s not just an exit; it’s a way for vets to secure their legacy and improve their quality of life, often while retaining a clinical role.

The Capital Stack: Equity + Debt

Sheehan raised over €200M ($225M), but it wasn’t all typical venture capital. The funding came from two main sources:

Equity from Oaktree Capital: This is the private equity sponsor. They provide the foundational capital to build the platform and team, and they take the most risk in exchange for the largest share of the upside. Sheehan also invested her own money, demonstrating personal conviction. · Debt from Ares Management: This is the leverage. The €116M facility is cheaper than equity (you don’t give up ownership) and is used to execute the repeatable part of the playbook: buying profitable clinics. Lenders provide this kind of capital because the acquisitions themselves are of cash-flowing, relatively low-risk assets.

Common Mistakes in a Roll-Up Strategy

The roll-up model looks simple, but it’s hard to execute well. Founders considering this path should watch out for these common failure modes:

Paying ‘Winner’s Curse’ Prices: In a competitive process, it's easy to overpay. A roll-up creates value through disciplined acquisition prices and operational improvements, not by winning every deal at any cost. Set a firm valuation ceiling (e.g., a multiple of EBITDA) and stick to it. · Bad Integration: The biggest challenge is cultural. You are merging dozens of unique, independent businesses. If you fail to integrate them properly, you don't have a platform; you just have a messy portfolio of disconnected assets. You need a dedicated integration team and a 100-day plan for every acquisition. · The ‘Shared Services’ Promise Falls Flat: If you promise to relieve administrative burden but your central platform is inefficient or bureaucratic, you will create resentment. The value of your platform must be overwhelmingly obvious to the people you acquire. UNAVETS delivered over 100 training sessions in a year, a concrete demonstration of their value-add.

How to Apply This This Week

You don't need to be in veterinary care to apply these lessons. If you operate in a fragmented services market, consider if a roll-up is a better path than chasing VC.

Map your market’s fragmentation. Are there thousands of small, independent operators in your industry with owners nearing retirement age? This is the primary signal that a market is ripe for a roll-up. · Model a simple acquisition. Take a typical small business in your sector. Can you realistically acquire it for 3-5x its annual profit (EBITDA)? What 2-3 operational changes could you make to increase that profit? · Build relationships beyond VC. Start networking with private equity investors (especially in the lower middle market) and private credit/debt funds. Their mindset and criteria are completely different from VCs. Learn to speak their language of cash flow, leverage, and operational efficiency. · Reframe your failures. Look at your past business mistakes, especially financial ones. Write down exactly what you learned about capitalization, negotiation, or investor management. This is no longer a failure; it's your personal playbook.