From a Business You Run.
To an Asset Investors Compete For.

Exit Boston is a middle-market M&A advisory firm that helps founders of $10M–$50M businesses transition into institutional-quality assets investors compete to acquire.

Our Philosophy

The Real Exit Begins
Before the Sale

Most M&A firms start working when a founder is ready to sell. We believe the real work starts much earlier — when a founder begins preparing a business that can thrive without them.

That shift — from founder-dependent operation to institutional-quality enterprise — is what we call The Real Exit. It's not just a transaction. It's a transition.

When investors evaluate a company, they don't see what the founder sees. They see risk, scalability, and structure. Our role is to bridge that gap — to guide founders through the institutional lens and systematically close the distance between where they are and where investors need them to be.

Make no mistake: our ultimate job is to successfully sell companies. We transition your business into an institutional quality asset, bring it to market, and sell it for a premium.

“A business that depends on you is a liability to an investor. A business that thrives without you is an institutional asset.”
— The uncompromising reality of the institutional lens

Rick McDonald

Founder & Managing Director

Rick McDonald is the founder of Exit-Boston, a boutique middle-market M&A advisory firm based in New England. Over the course of his career, he has advised founders and private business owners on the sale, recapitalization, and strategic transition of their companies, working primarily with businesses generating between $10 million and $100 million in revenue. He has been directly involved in 50–100 closed middle-market transactions spanning more than two decades of active deal advisory work.

McDonald's standing in the middle-market advisory community is independently verified. In the Q2 2024 Axial League Table — published by Axial, the leading private deal network serving the middle market — Rick McDonald and Exit-Boston were recognized as the number one M&A advisory firm in Massachusetts, the number two firm in New England, and among the top ten M&A advisory firms in the United States. In 2025, McDonald was named individually to Axial's Advisor Industry Awards: Top 10 Deals of 2025 in the Food and Beverage sector — one of only ten advisors selected nationally from more than 2,000 closed transactions reviewed.

In addition to his advisory practice, McDonald serves as Adjunct Professor of Finance at Endicott College in Beverly, Massachusetts, where he teaches the frameworks and practitioner vocabulary that form the foundation of exit planning. This dual role — active ranked practitioner and finance educator — provides unique insight into preparing founder-led businesses for institutional acquisition.

Steve Vesey

Co-Founder

Steve Vesey is another integral part of the 'Exit' Team. He was born in Boston and graduated from Salem State University. He's been a CPA for 40 years and sold his ten-person practice to devote full-time efforts to business valuation and exit planning.

Steve now lives in Danvers, MA with his wife Michele. They raised 6 children and are the proud grandparents of 13 grandchildren.

For the past 25 years, he's prepared hundreds of business valuations. Steve has assisted hundreds of baby boomer business owners in creating successful succession plans to exit from their enterprises.

Steve is also the proud recipient of the National Excellence in Exit Planning Award from Pinnacle Equity Solutions and is a frequent speaker at national conferences on exit planning.

His professional mission is to help the baby boomer business owner get to the finish line and enjoy the retirement they so justly deserve.

Sevan Demirdogen

Partner

Sevan is a retired executive with over 40 years of experience managing a number of domestic and international businesses. His most recent position was as CEO and Board Member of Kano Laboratories, a Portfolio Company of Gryphon Investors. Prior to Kano, Sevan was President and Executive Vice President of Scapa Group plc. Sevan started his career with Illinois Tool Works (ITW) and over his 36 year tenure, held a variety of management positions ultimately leading to the position of Group President for the last 10 years prior to his retirement from ITW.

Sevan holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Business Administration from Eastern Nazarene College of Quincy, MA where he graduated summa cum laude and was inducted into the Phi Delta Lambda Honor Society. Sevan also earned a Management Certificate at the Greater Boston Executive Management Program, MIT Sloan School of Management in Cambridge, MA.

Mike Camarro

Business Development Officer

Mike is the Business Development Officer here at Exit the Family Business.

Before being named Business Development Officer, Mike worked as Controller and CFO in several different industries including retail, distribution, technology and wealth management. He played a major role in a variety of strategic acquisitions, leading the finance and accounting teams throughout the due diligence phase of integration.

Mike started his career as an auditor working in the Boston office of Coopers & Lybrand (now PriceWaterhouseCoopers). There, he earned his CPA, and worked in a myriad of industries specializing primarily in manufacturing and financial services.

Prior to joining Coopers, Mike earned his BS degree in Business from Salem State University, graduating Magna Cum Laude in 1989.

Mike now resides in Danvers, MA with his fiancé Jenn and is the proud dad of his three children.

David Hockley

Partner

David Hockley is a Partner and senior member of the Exit Team at Exit Boston.

A serial entrepreneur and operator, David has scaled high-growth businesses across Europe, North America, Asia, and the Middle East for over 15 years, personally driving more than $300 million in sales. His firsthand experience building and professionalizing founder-led companies is invaluable when preparing businesses for institutional buyers.

As CEO and Co-Founder of Elite Investment Group, a leading wealth management firm with offices across three continents, David successfully executed a strategic industry trade sale exit — giving him rare, battle-tested insight into the emotional, operational, and financial realities of a founder's exit.

Today, David is also Founder & CEO of GrowthMachines.io, an enterprise AI-powered sales and marketing automation platform featuring Agentic SDRs and Virtual Sales Teams. This hands-on work building scalable, predictable revenue systems allows him to help Exit Boston clients dramatically strengthen their go-to-market engines, increase revenue predictability, increase profit margins, and implement the exact predictible revenue-engine improvements that private equity firms and strategic acquirers reward with premium valuations.

David's unique combination of proven scaling expertise, successful personal exits, and deep modern sales and marketing infrastructure knowledge makes him uniquely positioned to help turn strong founder-led businesses into institutional-quality assets that attract competitive bids.

David lives in the UK with his wife and their four children.

Support Staff

Laura

Senior Research Analyst

Laura brings more than fifteen years of applied research experience to the Exit Boston team, with deep expertise in middle-market industry analysis, competitive landscape mapping, and buyer universe identification. She has spent her career embedded in the M&A advisory world — developing the institutional fluency to quickly surface the data that matters and filter out what doesn't.

Shaped by Rick McDonald's exacting standards for deal preparation and buyer intelligence, Laura anchors the firm's research infrastructure. From sector-specific precedent transaction analysis to target buyer profiling, she ensures that every engagement is built on a foundation of precise, current, and actionable intelligence.

Abbey

Chief of Staff & Administrative Director

Abbey is the operational backbone of Exit Boston. With a background spanning financial services administration, executive operations, and client engagement management, she has spent two decades keeping complex, detail-intensive organizations running with precision. She earned her stripes managing operations at a Boston-area private equity firm before joining the Exit Boston team.

Trained in the operational discipline and client-first philosophy that Rick McDonald has built this firm around, Abbey coordinates all client-facing communications, manages the firm's engagement pipeline, and ensures that deal timelines, document workflows, and client deliverables move without friction.

Thor

Director of Transaction Marketing & Investor Relations

Thor is Exit Boston's specialist in the language that buyers speak. With a background in investment banking and a decade of experience producing institutional-grade offering documents for middle-market transactions, Thor brings uncommon precision to the firm's marketing function. He has spent his career at the intersection of financial storytelling and investor psychology.

A direct reflection of Rick McDonald's belief that a great CIM does not just inform — it compels — Thor leads the development of Confidential Information Memoranda, executive teasers, and investor presentation materials that translate complex business narratives into the structured, data-supported documents that serious acquirers and private equity sponsors expect to see.

Finn

Assistant Director of Financial Analysis

Finn is a careful and analytically driven finance professional with deep roots in middle-market M&A. He spent the early part of his career in accounting, corporate finance, and investment management before moving into deal advisory — where precision, consistency, and an instinct for where numbers will be challenged became his defining strengths.

At Exit Boston, Finn works directly under Rick McDonald and Mike Camarro, supporting the firm's internal financial management, cash operations, and the financial modeling that underpins the firm's advisory work. Grounded in the same rigorous, institutional-quality standards Rick McDonald has applied across decades of middle-market transactions, Finn ensures the firm's financial foundation is as strong as the deals it brings to market.

Third-Party Recognition, Earned Annually

Axial is the leading independent research and data platform for the U.S. middle market — the source that serious dealmakers rely on to identify the highest-performing M&A advisory firms in the country. Their rankings are not submitted. They are earned.

EXIT-BOSTON has been recognized by Axial three years in succession:

2024— #1 in Massachusetts · #3 in New England · #10 in the United States (First Half)
2025— Top M&A Firm in Food & Beverage, Nationally · Top 12 in the Country
2026— Axial Top 100 M&A Advisors in the United States

Consistent recognition at this level, from the industry's most credible independent voice, reflects something straightforward: a methodology that produces results, and clients who trust the process.