Entrepreneurship Through Acquisition: How Daniel Certner Bought Fleet Packaging
Daniel Certner spent a year searching for a business to buy. He found Fleet Packaging through a strategy called entrepreneurship through acquisition. Before that, he spent six years at Facebook and five more as CTO of an HR payroll company. Today he owns a packaging distributor with factories in 30 countries. On this episode of the Rebellious Times Podcast, he walks through what actually happens when you buy an existing business. It’s different from starting one from scratch.
From Facebook to Fleet Packaging: Daniel’s Path
Daniel grew up in New Jersey. He studied Spanish, not business, because his college didn’t offer the major he wanted. After graduation, he opened a sushi restaurant. Then he landed a job at Facebook in 2012, back when the company had fewer than 3,000 employees. He started in risk management, investigating fraud inside Farmville. Then he taught himself to code and worked through Facebook’s internal engineering bootcamp. By the time he left six years later, the company had grown to roughly 60,000 people. From there, he spent close to six years as CTO of Namely, an HR payroll company, until it was sold. That sale pushed him toward entrepreneurship through acquisition, buying an existing, profitable business instead of building something new. So he gave himself a year to find one.
What Fleet Packaging Actually Does
Fleet Packaging sits between US brands and a global network of manufacturers. It sources bags, boxes, and mailers from factories in about 30 countries. Rather than stocking standard sizes, the company builds custom packaging around what a client actually ships. It handles sourcing, importing, warehousing, and distribution end to end. That flexibility matters because supply chains keep shifting. Daniel says something changes basically every single day. Fleet also helps brands rationalize how many SKUs they run. A business with three sub-brands and fifteen slightly different bag sizes is usually paying for complexity it doesn’t need. Still, some clients genuinely need that complexity. Daniel pointed to a client running four or five hundred clothing hang-tag SKUs. In a case like that, AI tooling, not simplification, is the real fix.
Nearshoring to Mexico and De-Risking Supply Chains
For years, the default packaging playbook was one factory in China. Daniel says that habit is finally shifting because of tariffs and shipping volatility. Fleet has been moving overseas programs to Mexico instead. That cuts ocean freight out of the equation, in favor of trucking product straight across the border. One client that moved from Europe to Mexico saw costs drop by roughly 40 percent. Lead time and carbon footprint both shrank too. Fleet also offers free safety-stock storage in Mexico. Product sits close to the US instead of riding out weeks of ocean-freight uncertainty. Sometimes Mexico wins purely on price. More often, it wins on the non-price factors once tariffs level the playing field with Asia.
Fleet vs. Uline: Two Different Businesses
Daniel draws a clear line between Fleet and a catalog supplier like Uline. Uline is built for speed: stock sizes, multiple colors, small quantities, available now. Fleet works differently. It steps in once a brand has scaled past that stage and needs something custom, branded, and priced for real volume. As Daniel put it, anyone can make a box or a bag. The harder part is deciding what to make, how to make it, and how to get it there reliably. That’s why he frames Fleet’s product as closer to a post-purchase experience than a packaging order. The value shows up in the planning and the partnership, not just the box itself.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction and Background
08:59 What Fleet Packaging Does
17:28 Nearshoring to Mexico and De-Risking Supply Chains
19:27 Fleet vs. Uline
22:20 The Search Fund Journey: Finding and Buying Fleet
33:43 Lessons for Future Acquirers
How Daniel Bought a Business: Inside the Search Fund Process
Committing to entrepreneurship through acquisition meant giving himself one real year to find something worth buying. Daniel estimates he looked at close to 1,000 businesses before finding Fleet. He met somewhere between 10 and 15 owners in person. He learned quickly that a seller who can’t speak confidently about their own numbers is usually a red flag. Diligence on Fleet took three months rather than the more typical two. That included an outside accounting firm, lawyers, and an SBA loan process. He also shadowed the previous owner one day a week for months. Daniel’s advice for anyone considering the same path is blunt: don’t fall in love with a business until after you’ve bought it. Never let a broker rush your diligence timeline either. He bought Fleet Packaging in September 2023. Three years in, he says the accounting firm’s diligence found nothing he hadn’t already uncovered himself.
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