Buying Enduring Service Businesses on the East Coast

Who We Are

Duratus is a self-funded permanent holding company founded by two longtime friends, Yaz Malas and Nick Vafiades, and is dedicated to buying and growing exceptional small & mid-size service businesses.

Why Us

Long-Term Players

As a permanent self-funded holding company, we care about long-term performance over short term results. We have no plan or need to sell after we buy, which gives us the luxury to think and act in decades.

Hands-On Operators

As owner-operators ourselves, we have experience building and scaling businesses, and plan to bring that experience and energy to your business as full-time operators.

Succession Planning

We offer owners the opportunity to monetize years of hard work through a sale allowing them to retire from day-to-day operations after a transition period.

Legacy

We ensure legacies are preserved and enhanced over decades because we are long-term owners and operators. Your business will not change hands multiple times – just once.

Our Investment Criteria

Service Business

Any business that generates the majority of its revenue by providing a service, rather than creating or distributing a physical product. This includes but not limited to: Business, Consumer, Industrial, Healthcare, and IT Services

Revenue

$4M – $20M

EBITDA

$750K – $2M

East Coast (Maine to Florida)

5+ years of consistently profitable operations

Our Team

We are building Duratus upon a shared passion for entrepreneurship and desire to grow locally owned, enduring service businesses. As partners, we combine our distinct aptitudes with years of experience as entrepreneurs starting and scaling our own businesses.

Yaz Malas

Founding Partner

Yaz started his career picking stocks at Fidelity Investments where he oversaw over $50B of invested capital. In addition, he led new investments exceeding $1B in public equities across retail, industrial, and business services companies. Following that, Yaz co-founded and sold D1 Brands, a venture-backed e-commerce consolidator that acquired over 20 e-commerce businesses and raised more than $150M of debt and equity. Under his guidance as CEO, D1 Brands scaled from $0 to over $100M in sales and built a global team of 100+ individuals before exiting. Yaz graduated summa cum laude from the University of Massachusetts Amherst with a degree in Finance, Economics, and Mathematics.

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Nick Vafiades

Founding Partner

Nick started his career as an independent trader in his college dorm room. Raising a small amount of capital from family, he initially focused on small-mid cap stocks utilizing a bottom-up, fundamental approach combined with technical analysis. Following several years of strong performance, he co-founded Stoneholm Management in 2019, growing the firm to over $25M of assets under management. At Stoneholm, Nick oversaw portfolio risk management with over $1B of transaction volume and led the development of a proprietary portfolio management tool for the firm. Nick graduated magna cum laude from the University of Massachusetts Amherst with a degree in Mechanical Engineering.

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Contact Us

If you’d like to learn more about Duratus or have an opportunity to discuss, please send us a message below!