Jarrett Bauer and the business of letting go

In April 2022, Jarrett Bauer changed seats. The company he had co-founded ten years earlier, Health Recovery Solutions, named a new chief executive. Bauer became chairman. For a founder, it is a deceptively tidy sentence: a new title, an announcement, another person taking responsibility for the working day. Behind it sits a question that has since become central to his career. What should happen to a business once you have built it?

Bauer’s next company, Montauk AI, works on precisely that territory: valuations, preparation and company sales. He had spent years persuading people to buy from his business. Now he helps owners work toward selling theirs. There is a certain economy to the career move. The founder has found another use for everything that founding taught him.

A taste for the unfinished

Long before the chairman’s appointment, Bauer was choosing an institution that was itself getting started. In 2010, he was part of the charter Global MBA class at Johns Hopkins Carey Business School. A new program offered fewer accumulated assurances than an established one. It also offered the chance to participate in making something.

He had studied at Villanova and worked as a consultant. His explanation for choosing Carey was straightforward: “The real appeal was to be part of something new and something that had never been done before.” It is an early glimpse of a preference that would become rather consequential.

Johns Hopkins identifies him as a 2012 graduate of that charter program. That was also the year he co-founded HRS with Rohan Udeshi and Dan Priece. The business plan had taken shape while he was at Hopkins. By then, the new thing was becoming his own responsibility.

His education connected two subjects that would remain useful: finance at Villanova and management at Carey. The later move into transaction advisory work can look like a departure when viewed through company names. Viewed through those subjects, it has a longer runway.

Three friends, then a much larger room

The first partnership was personal. Udeshi and Priece were friends from college, a detail Bauer still mentioned years into the company’s growth. Early collaborators can make a startup sound pleasantly informal. Growing the organization requires turning that familiarity into roles, decisions and work that people beyond the original circle can understand.

Bauer described one early advantage in practical terms: cloud software reduced startup costs and allowed a smaller company to compete with larger ones. It also made expansion easier. That explanation is refreshingly concerned with the bill. A good idea is considerably more useful when a small team can afford to deliver it.

Recognition followed. In 2016, he appeared on Forbes’ 30 Under 30 list and received NJBIZ Forty Under 40 recognition. HRS reached No. 272 on the 2018 Inc. 5000. The company subsequently appeared at No. 799 in 2019 and No. 1,005 in 2020. Those are dated milestones in the business’s growth, rather than a permanent description of its position.

By 2020, Bauer could describe a more revealing change than a ranking. His role had expanded from being the lead salesperson to managing more than 100 people. Selling draws on the founder’s own energy. Management asks how that energy translates into an organization where other people carry responsibility.

His approach combined enthusiasm for change with caution about hiring. He wanted colleagues who were energetic and committed to the mission, and he cared about keeping them. The appetite for moving quickly coexisted with concern for who would be doing the moving.

He also spoke about trying to retain a beginner’s mind as the company grew. There is some humility in admitting that curiosity may have come more easily when the team was smaller. An expanding business can become very good at explaining itself. Staying open to being corrected is a separate skill.

“We just listened to people.”

Jarrett Bauer, 2020

The founder changes seats

Growth brought investment and the work that investment pays for. HRS announced a $10 million growth investment led by Edison Partners in 2019. A Series C led by LLR Partners followed in March 2021, with Edison participating again. The stated uses included infrastructure, product development, sales and marketing.

Infrastructure is an unglamorous word with a useful job. LLR’s account of its work with HRS described a company that needed a more mature foundation for continued growth. The work reached across planning, leadership coaching, hiring and the organization of its product and commercial teams.

This is the part of a founder’s story that rarely lends itself to a photograph. A business needs ways to coordinate people who were not present at its creation. Decisions require owners. Plans need to survive contact with an ordinary Tuesday. The company becomes larger than the habits of its founders.

In April 2022, Kimberly O’Loughlin became CEO and Bauer was appointed chairman. The announcement established a change in responsibility after his decade as founding chief executive. Two years later, when Jason Comer was named CEO, Bauer was again identified as chairman and co-founder.

His public response to Comer’s appointment emphasized the incoming leader’s progression and contribution. Comer had spent years inside the company, including time as CFO and president. The founder’s story now included making room for other people’s leadership stories. The organization had acquired a history that several people could tell.

Back to the owner’s side of the table

By 2025, Bauer was publicly leading Montauk AI, a company concerned with the financial work behind business ownership. Its proposition begins with an unevenly distributed resource: the ability to get experienced help when preparing to sell a company.

A larger business can assemble substantial advisory support. A smaller owner may be trying to understand valuation while also running the operation. Bauer described owners facing basic questions about what their companies were worth and which potential buyers they should approach. Those questions can be unfamiliar even to someone who knows every corner of the business.

Montauk AI’s work includes financial forecasts, marketing materials, investor outreach and managing the transaction process. Software is part of the proposition; experience with operating businesses is another. A forecast has to describe an actual organization, with its particular strengths and complications, before it can help anyone make a decision.

David Bell, then leading GrandCare, emphasized that operating experience when discussing Bauer’s team. He valued their familiarity with the sector and the ownership requirements that could otherwise appear late in negotiations. The attraction was help that understood the business beneath the presentation.

Bauer also discussed forecasting at an April 2025 industry conference. He pointed to smaller companies’ ability to model future revenue and operating scenarios using tools once associated with much larger enterprises. The appeal was concrete: owners could work through assumptions about the next few years before arriving at a negotiating table.

A deal with an ending

On July 1, 2025, Pennant announced its acquisition of GrandCare Health Services in Southern California. The buyer credited Montauk AI as the placement agent, supporting GrandCare through execution. That sentence gave the newer business a particularly useful milestone: a completed transaction acknowledged by the acquiring company.

The distinction matters to the story. A founder can describe an ambition at any stage. An announced transaction records a piece of work reaching its conclusion. For Bauer, the new venture had moved from a proposition about how sales could happen to a role in one that had happened.

By August 2026, Montauk AI reported more than $100 million in assets under mandate. That measure describes business the firm says it has been engaged to represent. It should be read separately from the value of completed sales. The firm was also widening access to its Market Assessment, which brings valuation and operating analysis together.

Bauer’s stated ambition was to reduce transaction times by 70 percent. It is a goal for the company, with each transaction providing another test. The more interesting part of his argument concerns timing: much of the preparation that shapes a sale happens while an owner is still occupied with running the business.

The thesis brings him back to an operator’s daily concerns. Organized information, credible forecasts and clear responsibilities have a life before any sale. His second venture gives those ordinary disciplines an eventual destination: a buyer who can understand what has been built.

Life outside the deal room

For a public update about his plans for 2026, Bauer chose a photograph with very little to do with spreadsheets. He was standing at his wedding, surrounded by guests. He described 2025 as the year of getting married and the next year as one devoted to getting clients exits. Montauk AI, he said, was under contract to sell ten organizations.

The post supplied a little perspective on a career usually measured in appointments and company milestones. There were people in the picture, rather a lot of them, and an occasion that did not need an earnings forecast to explain its value.

His working life has also depended on other people: college friends who became co-founders, colleagues who took on leadership, owners who entrusted his next company with a consequential piece of their lives. The responsibilities changed. So did the person holding the CEO title.

Bauer once said he thrived on change. His career has given that preference a series of practical tests: join a new program, build a company, become chairman, start again. Now the work involves helping other founders approach their own change of seats. They have built something. He is interested in what comes next.