Patrick Collins

Work

I've started three businesses, bought one without a broker, spent fifteen months trying to sell one, and shut one down. Before any of that I was a guide.

I got to the mountains the long way. After an economics and entrepreneurship degree from Bentley University, I spent my ski bum years in Tahoe City and then Jackson, guiding big-water rivers, guiding splitboard trips and teaching avalanche courses. I've led groups down rivers and across remote mountain ranges around the world. These days that's personal time, not work.

Twelve years of owning businesses in Jackson since then have covered most of what can happen to a small business owner: seasonal hiring, a National Park Service concession, a handshake lease, a seller-financed acquisition, a product launch that didn't work, and a sale that didn't close. BizTender is what I built out of the last one.

2026Now

BizTender

Co-Founder, with Tom O'Loughlin

Software for owners selling a business on their own. It's built for Main Street businesses that will sell for under $3 million.

An owner builds a confidential information memorandum by working through a guided AI interview and uploading their own statements, then shares one link everywhere the business is listed. Buyers who come through that link sign an NDA and show they can fund the deal before the owner spends any time on them. Once there's a real buyer, the LOI builder and negotiation tools are there for both sides. A free Learn center covers SDE, valuation, CIMs, vetting buyers and selling without a broker.

BizTender charges software fees only. It never takes a cut of a sale.

Next to the company, I take on a small number of owners myself through Without a Broker.

biztender.ai
2014 to nowFounded

Teton Backcountry Rentals

Founder and owner, Jackson, Wyoming

My first winter in Jackson, a group of college friends came out from Boston and wanted to get into the backcountry. There was nowhere in town to rent the gear. By February 2014 there was.

TBR is a year-round gear rental shop at 565 N Cache, walking distance from Town Square, that gets visitors into Grand Teton and Yellowstone without flying their gear in.

  • Winter: backcountry ski and splitboard setups, avalanche gear, snowshoes
  • Summer: camping and backpacking kits, mountaineering gear, paddleboards and kayaks, 4x4 truck campers
  • Custom trip planning, frontcountry and backcountry
  • Online reservations around the clock

The year gets made in about a fourteen-week summer window, and we run winter to keep a team together all year. A management team runs the day to day now. In 2024 and 2025 I spent fifteen months trying to sell the business, with a broker and without one. It didn't sell, and I still run it.

tetonbcrentals.com
2020 to nowBought, no broker

Bear Aware

Owner, through Teton Backcountry Rentals. Bought in 2020 with no broker involved.

Bear spray is essential in grizzly country, and you can't fly with it. Bear Aware rents it to visitors at the places they actually arrive, so they don't buy a can they'll throw away at the end of the trip.

I bought it from its founder in 2020. There was no broker on either side: it was never listed, and she and I worked out the deal directly, mostly seller-financed. Today it's a network across Yellowstone, Grand Teton, Jackson and southwest Montana.

  • An authorized National Park Service concessioner inside Yellowstone
  • Staffed pickup kiosks at the Jackson Hole Airport baggage claim, Canyon Village, Old Faithful, West Yellowstone, Teton Village and Big Sky
  • 24/7 vending machines in Montana and drop-off points throughout the park
  • Every rental includes bear safety education and a practice spray with an inert canister
  • Partnered with the Vital Ground Foundation, a land trust protecting grizzly habitat

Buying Bear Aware put me on the buyer's side of the table before I ever sat on the seller's side. Both seats shape how I think about selling a business.

bearaware.com
2024Wound down

Dabble

Co-Founder, with my wife and my best friend

A whole-food sauce brand built on Chef Joelle's recipes. The idea was a shortcut to a good dinner: real ingredients, no refined sugar, and one sauce that works as a marinade, a dressing or a finishing drizzle. We sold online in multi-packs.

We put about $100,000 into it and found out that getting a consumer packaged goods brand off the ground takes a lot more than that. We also learned that starting a company with your spouse right before your first kid is born is a hard way to do it. We wound it down.

A hard lesson, and one that taught me a lot about business and about the rest of life.

EarlierWhere it started

Boston, and the guiding years

Boston, Tahoe City, and rivers and ranges elsewhere

One college summer I had a corporate internship lined up. The day before it started I quit, and went to work as general manager of the first designated driving service in Boston instead: we drove people home in their own cars. It was a young company, and getting it off the ground meant doing a little of everything. Regulatory problems ended it after a couple of years, but at 21 it was my real education in entrepreneurship.

After school I followed the snow. I spent years as a river guide and a splitboard guide, taught avalanche education, and worked in restaurants to pay for it. The job was keeping a group safe and moving when conditions didn't cooperate. Running a seasonal business in a mountain town turned out to be close to the same job.

What it adds up to

An operator who has sat in every chair at the table.

I've been the founder, the buyer, the seller who didn't sell, and the partner who wound a company down. None of it came from a corporate job. Most of it came from owning something in a small town where everyone knows whether you showed up.

That's the background I bring to owners selling their own business, and the reason BizTender is built the way it is.

Without a Broker Read the letters