10 Aug Acquiring Minds: Surviving a 2-Month Revenue Freeze in Year 1
Today’s guest spent his career studying healthcare from the outside — first in managed care operations, then as an investment banker doing healthcare M&A. Then he pivoted, bought a business, and got a crash course in the one thing the spreadsheets never fully prepared him for: working capital (what else?). Chibunna Chimezie is a Nigerian immigrant who grew up in Jersey City, where his parents worked blue collar jobs for 25 years raising the family. After a Duke MBA and a stretch in healthcare investment banking, Chibunna went the self-funded SBA route — deliberately buying a smaller company so he could hold 89% of the equity rather than the roughly 25% a traditional search fund would have left him. The business is Veterans Room, a behavioral health provider serving veterans. Chibunna acquired it in August 2025 for $1.6 million. In his first week of ownership, a congressional fight froze all telehealth claims. So for nearly two months, Chibunna kept delivering services with no revenue coming in at all — a live demonstration of why he’d been so deliberate about post-acquisition liquidity. Listen for that. Also listen for how he came to think about working capital: not as money, but as a tool the business needs to run — like gas in a car you’ve just bought. Here is Chibunna Chimezie, owner of Veterans Room.
