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Maumee firm looks to grow through six-month Scalerator program

Posted By: Toledo Blade on February 13, 2026.  For more information, please click here to read the source article.

Starting a business is hard, and growing a business isn’t exactly easy, either.

A Maumee company, however, has been accepted into a program called Scalerator that might smooth the way toward growth and expansion.

Porch Conversions, founded in 2020, manufactures custom four-track windows and doors that it claims will transform an outdoor space, such as a deck, porch, or patio, into a three-season room. Its sister company, LivingSpace Sunrooms, which shares the factory space, offers a unique sunroom framing system that, according to the company, makes sunrooms stronger, better insulated, more customizable, and longer lasting.

Both companies are owned by Kraig Mackett, an entrepreneur and real estate investor.

Although the combined businesses have total annual sales in excess of $12 million, they are not satisfied with staying that size. Their goal is to grow — which is where Scalerator comes in.

Unlike early-stage startup initiatives, Scalerator is a six-month program that assists established privately held companies with annual sales between $3 million and $15 million, 10 to 99 employees, and a strong desire to scale up their businesses quickly and sustainably.

The challenges of growth

Such companies can face challenges managing rapid growth, establishing new systems, and moving from founder-based leadership to team-based management. They often require specialized support and leadership development, rather than just seed funding.

Porch Conversions’ participation in Scalerator is funded by the Burton D. Morgan Foundation, which is based in Hudson, Ohio, and by funds from the Richard J. Fasenmyer Foundation. The foundations are charged by their founders with developing and promoting programming that supports growing businesses.

Dan Hampu, the president of the Burton D. Morgan Foundation, says startups have the daunting task of finding customers who are willing to pay for a new product or service from a company they’ve never heard of.

“That’s a huge obstacle. There’s tremendous risk and uncertainty,” he said.

But established businesses that want to grow face different challenges. Hampu described those as a struggle to find the right level of resources and to build the internal systems that support workers in their roles.

Developing a plan

Scalerator was developed by Daniel Isenberg, the CEO of Entrepreneurship Policy Advisors and a former Harvard Business School professor. More than 400 companies have participated in the program to date, including firms in Ohio, Wisconsin, Colombia, Canada, Brazil, Trinidad and Tobago, Guatemala, and Panama.

The program teaches growing businesses to focus on the three Cs: acquiring more customers, increasing organizational capacity, and managing cash flow.

Isenberg says most participating firms witness new growth within weeks and continue their growth long after the Scalerator program ends. By way of example, he says that within one year of completing the program, the first four Scalerator cohorts, totaling 52 companies in one region, generated $94 million in new revenue and increased their headcount by more than 300 people.

Acceptance into the Scalerator program involves completion of a detailed application, which Hampu calls “a pretty heavy prescreen.” If accepted, a company will join a 10-member cohort of similarly-sized firms from different industries. In addition to learning from the course leaders, the companies in the cohort learn from each other.

The Burton D. Morgan Foundation initially funded Scalerator programs primarily in northeast Ohio, but that is changing. Gina Dotson, the director of communications and grants management for the foundation, said because the program is primarily offered in a virtual environment, the foundation has been accepting qualified companies, such as Porch Conversions, that are a little further afield.

Participating companies commit to attending seven 1½ day workshops, a series of self-assessments, team exercises, and mentoring sessions conducted by the Scalerator faculty. Their leaders develop a plan to guide their companies through the scaling-up process.

Learning from peer companies

Porch Conversions is part of a cohort of 10 that includes a Cleveland-area beer and chicken wings restaurant chain, a bathroom fixtures business, and a company that does aftermarket chrome plating for cars and trucks.

“We’ve been pleased so far,” said John McGann, who is president of both Porch Conversions and LivingSpace Sunrooms. He and five other employees are members of the leadership team participating in Scalerator. At present, they are less than a quarter through the program.

Though LivingSpace Sunrooms is not formally a part of the Scalerator cohort, McGann is hopeful that the lessons learned will apply to that company as well.

He said Scalerator is essentially a search for answers to fundamental questions.

“Why do you exist? What do you do and why do you do it?” he asked rhetorically. “You start by defining your customer — the buyer persona. That process reinforces our fundamentals. Being a small light manufacturing company, we have a strong customer-focused team here. But we took a step back and took another look at who our customers are. It really put a magnifying glass on it.”

He described the process as taking a company’s data and real-life experience and applying different theories and processes to them.

“I’m not sure there have been any massive epiphanies yet,” he said, “but [Scalerator] gets members of our team together to focus on very specific things in our organization.

“It helps us as a team look at things from different perspectives.”