Jonathan came into roofing as a sales rep. He became a sales manager, then general manager, and for several years he ran the company that had hired him. Then he left. The place had become “more corporate,” he says, and he felt it had “lost that personal touch to the customer.”
He opened Ripple Roofing & Construction in Round Rock in January 2024, and he owns it alone. The difference he points to is simple and a little old-fashioned. “I go out to the jobs and I meet with the customers,” he says. A homeowner who hires Ripple gets to know the owner, he says, rather than “random sales reps selling roofs to people.” He knows that role from the inside. He used to be one.
Subcontractors handle the installs. Ripple describes its crews as ones it has worked with directly and vetted, with the owner involved at the inspection, the scope, the installation and the final sign-off. Jonathan puts it more plainly: it is mostly him. “If I tell a customer I’m going to do something, I do it,” he says. “That’s just how I’ve always been.”
He measures that mostly by who doesn’t call. He puts Ripple’s callback rate for leaks and other problems below 1 percent. “We don’t like to hear from our customers again, other than good reviews,” he says. Most never call back with a problem. When they do call, it is usually to refer someone or to hire him again.
The company holds CertainTeed’s ShingleMaster Premier certification, the top of the manufacturer’s three levels, and it backs installations with a 10-year workmanship warranty. Jobs end with a magnetic sweep of the property for stray nails.
Jonathan served in the U.S. Navy before settling in Central Texas, where he attended Central Texas College and then graduated from Texas A&M University in Killeen. He calls Ripple “a veteran-owned local business,” and in 2026 the U.S. Small Business Administration certified it as a veteran-owned small business.
That certification shapes what comes next. “What I’m focusing on right now is getting into government contracting,” he says. Government buyers reserve some work for firms like his. “They’ll actually set aside funds for veteran-owned companies,” he says, and he has started going after those jobs.
They would most likely be commercial. Today the company does mostly houses. “We can do commercial jobs,” he says, “but it’s mostly residential.” The set-aside route would push Ripple toward larger work, closer in scale to the kind of operation he left.
He has also noticed what tends to happen to roofing companies that grow. “There’s a whole lot of private equity going on buying up roofing companies,” he says. “That might be an option one day. I don’t know.”