Eric Leaver’s unlikely education in making companies grow

Eric Leaver trained for Christian ministry before making a career in business. That is an unusual preparation for negotiating acquisitions. Seminary asks a person to think about belief, purpose and service. A company adds a rather insistent question: will anybody pay for this? Leaver’s subsequent career has unfolded where those ambitions meet the practical demands of customers, employees and investors.

He has described being drawn to business because its results could be measured. There is something bracing about that preference. A compelling explanation can survive a long time in a meeting; a product eventually encounters someone with a budget and other things to do. Across consumer products, software ventures and investment partnerships, Leaver has repeatedly placed himself near that encounter.

The familiar version of an entrepreneurial life moves neatly from idea to company to exit. His has involved several kinds of work: founding, operating, assembling businesses and advising them. PracticeTek, where he was founding chief executive before moving into an advisory role, is a useful place to examine how those jobs differ. The title changes. The need to make the machinery run persists.

The kitchen table meets the sales channel

One early chapter was Zipfizz. The business began with a kitchen-table idea at the intersection of bottled water and energy drinks, and grew into a product with $30 million in sales. The commercial observation was simple enough to describe in a sentence. Turning it into a business required the less picturesque work of distribution.

Leaver’s advice to entrepreneurs emphasizes concentrating on a sales channel before trying to reach everyone. An enormous market can be a terrible daily instruction. It tells a founder how much might be possible while saying little about whom to call on Monday. A specific channel puts customers, selling methods and repeat purchases within the same field of vision.

That distinction gives the Zipfizz chapter its place in his story. The kitchen table supplies the appealing origin. The channel supplies a way out of the kitchen. Anyone can admire a large market from a comfortable distance; the awkward work begins when a particular buyer has to say yes. Consumer products make that awkwardness visible on a shelf.

A company made of other companies

PracticeTek brought a different organizational problem. Formed in 2020, it gathered software businesses into a shared investment and operating platform. By the time Lightyear Capital announced its recapitalization in December 2021, PracticeTek’s software was serving more than 16,000 practices. Greater Sum Ventures, its founding investor, remained involved as Lightyear joined.

The commercial proposition covered the everyday administration of a small enterprise: appointment scheduling, forms, communications, reputation management and payments. These are unglamorous responsibilities until they go wrong. A missed appointment, an unanswered inquiry or a cumbersome payment process can consume time that a growing business cannot easily spare. Software earns its place by making such work manageable.

Leaver’s task was to lead a collection rather than a single application. That distinction changes the conversation with a founder. A product already has customers, a team and a way of doing things. Joining a larger group introduces resources and opportunities, along with the difficult question of how much coordination will help. An acquisition announcement is the beginning of that question, however much it resembles an ending.

Keeping the founders at the table

The September 2022 acquisition of GrowthPlug offers a concrete example. GrowthPlug provided websites, listings management, social publishing, reputation tools and analytics. It had been founded in Silicon Valley in 2016, moved to the Portland area in 2019 and attracted investment from Elevate Capital. PracticeTek was buying a business with its own history.

The arrangement preserved an important part of that history: CEO Sudhir Bhatti, COO Shavita Bhatti and the founding team would continue to lead GrowthPlug. Leaver described its capabilities as complementary to PracticeTek’s existing software. The announcement paired a change in ownership with continuity in management, giving the transaction a more interesting shape than a logo being added to a presentation.

For an operator, this is where the work becomes human. A founder’s accumulated knowledge is rarely contained in the product documentation. Customers have preferences; teams have habits; promises have been made. Keeping the people who understand those details can matter as much as adding another feature. The GrowthPlug arrangement put those people visibly inside the plan.

Information has to arrive somewhere useful

In July 2023, PracticeTek introduced Ora at the Dykema conference in Denver. Co-founder April Lowry described a platform built around complex organizational data. Leaver’s explanation focused on where information went: toward the team members who could act on it. That emphasis turns a software launch into an argument about management.

A dashboard can make a company look informed while leaving its daily decisions untouched. The practical test is whether a useful fact reaches someone with the authority and time to respond. Leaver’s account of Ora placed that last step inside the product’s purpose. Collecting information was only part of the proposition; getting it into working hands supplied the reason.

He was also on the conference program for a panel about lessons from private equity investors, alongside Dan Davis, Robbie Isenberg and Matt Ornstein. The setting suited the work he was doing: discussing how organizations grow, how owners think and how capital changes the next set of decisions. The spreadsheet and the people responsible for it were in the same conversation.

A useful fact still needs someone who can act on it.An operating question running through the Ora launch

The chief executive changes seats

In September 2023, PracticeTek merged with Integrated Practice Solutions. The combined business retained the PracticeTek name. Lightyear kept majority ownership, Greater Sum Ventures continued its investment and Waud Capital Partners reinvested with a minority stake. George Ahn, the chief executive of IPS, became CEO of the combined company.

Leaver moved into an advisory role. The change is a significant punctuation mark in his PracticeTek chapter: the executive who helped establish the platform would contribute from a different seat as the organization grew. Founding a company and remaining its chief executive indefinitely are separate propositions. Here, the transaction made the distinction explicit.

The combined company announced a reach of more than 40,000 providers in the United States and Canada. That figure describes the merged organization, including IPS; it should be read in that context. Acquisitions alter the boundaries of a company as well as its scale. For Leaver’s story, the consequential fact is the handoff: a larger platform, a new chief executive and a continuing advisory connection.

The returns-first sentence

Leaver has also been explicit about how he connects social commitments with investment returns. In December 2022, he described PracticeTek as values-driven while setting out an approach to investment that began with returns. His short formulation was “We invest with a returns-first mind set.” It is a sentence with very little room for decorative interpretation.

His argument was that commitments to society and the planet could connect with growth and financial success. That is a proposition about compatibility, with commercial performance still present in the calculation. It helps explain the combination of language in his career: purpose sits beside transactions, and entrepreneurship beside the responsibilities of an operating executive.

In his professional biography, he also emphasized the satisfaction of helping executive teams achieve successful outcomes. Read alongside the investment language, this places two constituencies in the picture. Capital needs a result. Teams have to produce it. The tension between those responsibilities is ordinary executive work, even when an announcement makes the result sound effortless.

From the touchline to the owner’s box

By 2026, Leaver was discussing institutional buyers with Matt Ornstein. His comparison between the head coach and the owner’s box captures a familiar difference in perspective: operating a business involves people and immediate decisions; buying one involves patterns, performance and evidence. Both parties may be looking at the same enterprise while paying attention to different things.

The comparison is useful because a founder’s intimacy with a business can make its workings seem self-evident. An outside buyer needs those workings to become legible. Leaver’s discussion covered growth, margins, efficiency and future opportunity. The implication for an owner is practical: the story of the company must survive examination by somebody who did not live through it.

That is also a fitting way to look back at his own career. A consumer product, a collection of software companies and an advisory assignment require different skills, but each eventually meets an outside judgment. The customer buys, the investor commits, the next executive takes responsibility. A convincing company has to keep making sense as the person looking at it changes.

Still taking the next class

Leaver’s current public profile places him in the Denver metropolitan area and lists Casiva as his company. It also lists MIT Sloan Executive Education beginning in 2025. The detail is a useful ending for a career that began with a different kind of education: after years in executive roles, there is another classroom in the picture.

The biography has acquired more titles, but its recurring interest remains recognizable. How does an idea find a customer? How do several businesses function together? How does information become a decision? Each change of role brings the question back in another form. A founder must persuade a customer to take a chance. An operating executive has to make that decision repeatable across a team. An advisor helps somebody else carry the responsibility. Those questions are less photogenic than the moment a transaction closes. They also explain why a career can continue to be interesting after the photograph has been taken.