David Riggs built a company and sold it fast. Pneuma, a marketing business, went from zero to $3 million in annual recurring revenue in 36 months, and he sold it before he turned 28. “I built and sold a company very quickly,” Riggs says. What he did with that experience is the part that now shapes his work.
“I learned a lot of things, both from my mistakes and my wins, and used all that to put together the operating pieces for what I do now,” he says. Those pieces became the basis of Karteria, the Denver holding company he founded. Karteria acquires small businesses whose products customers love and whose operations are falling apart, then fixes them. Riggs frames the work as a response to a larger problem. Small business is the backbone of America, he says, and it is being hollowed out, often not because of the product but because of the finances, the delivery of the work and the leadership behind it.
The company looks for a specific kind of target: strong product-market fit and broken operations. Riggs calls these businesses profitable on paper and chaotic in practice. Karteria typically buys them at valuations under $1 million. The low price is deliberate, since the real work, and the real value, comes after the deal closes.
Once a business is in the portfolio, Karteria applies a framework it calls the Revenue Bowtie and rebuilds the finances, the delivery and the leadership. The aim is a team that can run the company without Riggs, and he says that in every company he wants to make himself unnecessary. “A business that runs without its owner is a business that survives its owner,” he says.
His approach to people is meant to support that goal. “Default trust, revoked by behavior,” is how he puts it. When something goes wrong, he offers direct feedback first and curiosity second. “I show up to solve problems, not own them.”
He is plain about the owners on the other side of the table. In his view, small business owners do not need another buyer looking for arbitrage.
Karteria’s portfolio now holds roughly $9 million in combined revenue across healthcare, construction, marketing, accounting and consumer businesses. It also runs a consulting line and holds ten real estate units. Riggs has set a far larger target, $100 million in portfolio revenue, one turnaround at a time. He is careful about what that number means. The measure behind it, he says, is companies saved and jobs kept, “not because bigger is better, but because every company stabilized is a set of jobs kept and a town that keeps its business.”
Outside the portfolio, Riggs spends time on people who are starting out. He mentors three to four first-time founders a month, every month and informally, and keeps his calendar open to anyone starting a business or leaving a job to start one. He guest lectures on acquisitions and marketing at his alma mater, Wabash College, through its Center for Innovation, Business & Entrepreneurship, and teaches a marketing class at Lutheran High School in Parker, Colorado, a few times a semester.
In July 2026 he was appointed to the Finance and Audit Committee of USA Weightlifting for a two-year term, where his job is to ask hard questions about the financials and make sure the CEO can explain the results. In May 2026 he ran the Grand Canyon rim-to-rim-to-rim, an ultra-distance effort that took him 15.5 hours.
Whether Karteria’s model can reach $100 million is an open question. Riggs has at least been specific about how he wants it judged. The test is whether the doors of the businesses stay open and whether the people who work there stay employed.