SearchFunds
Evidenced owner pipelines for searchers, and sourcing across the whole portfolio for the investors and accelerators who back them.
- 01Clients
- Searchers · Search-fund investors · Accelerators
- 02Typical target
- $1.5–5m EBITDA, founder-owned
- 03Delivered
- Owners with dated evidence, contacted
- 04For investors
- A cohort-wide readout each month
About half of recent search funds have bought a company. In the 2007–10 cohorts, 86% did.
Funds launched 2021–24 are acquiring at about one in two, against 58% for all concluded searches. About half of the decline comes down to competition and market conditions.
Acquisition rate for search funds launched 2021–24, against 58% all-time
Median search capital per principal, spent over a 21-month median search
Owner conversations behind the average international search, from 3,000+ businesses explored
Of searchers who sign an LOI within six months go on to acquire
A two-year clock and a funnel that has to be wide
Search capital of about $550,000 spread over a 21-month search is roughly $26,000 a month, most of it the searcher's salary. A search that ends without a deal writes off the capital and two years.
The funnel is the constraint. In one documented first search year, 3,404 owners were contacted for two signed letters of intent. Searchers who sign an LOI inside six months acquire 74% of the time.
The same brokers, the same lists
The standard advice is to spend most of a search on industry-led proprietary outreach. In practice, self-funded searchers buy mostly through brokers: 54% of successful self-funded acquisitions came through an intermediary and 25% from the searcher's own outreach.
Internationally, searchers rate proprietary exploration as their most useful channel, ahead of brokers. The tools below are what most of them use to do it.
Brokers and listings
54% of self-funded deals- BizBuySell
- Axial
- DealStream
- Acquire.com
- What it gives
- Businesses already for sale, with numbers and a broker to manage the process.
- What it misses
- The same listing reaches every searcher, sponsor and strategic watching the category.
Listing aggregators
Subscriptions- Kumo
- Rejigg
- Searchfunder
- What it gives
- Broker listings and some owner outreach, searchable in one place.
- What it misses
- Mostly the brokered market, gathered together.
Company data and contacts
Seat licences- Grata
- Inven
- ZoomInfo
- Apollo
- Sales Navigator
- What it gives
- Lists of companies in a niche and the contact details to reach them.
- What it misses
- No reason to call this year, and the same list every other searcher in the niche bought.
Callers and interns
Hourly or monthly- Interns
- Offshore callers
- Outsourced sourcing firms
- What it gives
- Outreach volume the searcher could not do alone.
- What it misses
- Volume without a reason to call. Owners in popular niches hear from several searchers a month.
Owners near an exit, before anyone has called
A searcher's ideal company is small, profitable, founder-owned and run by an owner thinking about the next chapter. Those owners leave the clearest trail in public records.
| Signal | Where it is read | What it indicates | Lead time |
|---|---|---|---|
| Licence tenure, single qualifier | State contractor and professional licence registries | One named individual has held the licence for 20 years or more and no second qualifier has been added. An owner-operator with no successor on file. | 12–36 mo |
| Retirement-plan movement | US Department of Labor Form 5500 (EFAST2) | Participant count flat or falling under a long-tenured owner; a plan terminated, frozen or converted to cash balance, which is classic pre-exit tax planning. | 6–24 mo |
| SBA loan seasoning | SBA 7(a) and 504 loan-level data | An owner-operated business in years 7 to 9 of a 10-year SBA loan. The note is retired at a sale, which gives a concrete reason to talk. | 6–24 mo |
| Listed, then withdrawn | Business-for-sale marketplaces, archived | A business marketed through a broker and pulled without a sale. The owner has already decided; the process failed. | 0–9 mo |
| Owner-occupied property listed | County assessor and commercial listings | The building the business operates from is put on the market or refinanced by the owner personally. Low volume, high intent. | 1–9 mo |
| Liens lapsing | Secretary of State UCC filings | Secured liens expiring without renewal. The balance sheet is clearing, which is how a business is made ready to sell. | 3–12 mo |
| Control in transition | State officer filings, registered-agent changes, probate dockets | An officer change, a death or an estate filing. Very high intent, very low volume, handled with care. | 0–6 mo |
Owner, evidence, conversation
Each owner arrives matched to the searcher's thesis, with the evidence cited and the first conversation summarised. Rejected names come back with the reason, so the searcher learns the filter as well as the list.
Applicator licence renewed by the founder aloneState department of agriculture
Retirement plan converted to cash balanceDOL Form 5500
SBA 7(a) loan in year 8 of 10SBA loan data
Illustrative record. Details are composite and do not describe a real company.
For the searcher
A pipeline that starts wide and stays wide, so the search does not end for lack of owners to call.
For the investor
One readout across the cohort: coverage by thesis, conversations by searcher, and which theses are running thin.
Sourcing as portfolio infrastructure
Search-fund investors and accelerators carry the cost of a failed search across the whole portfolio: roughly $550,000 of committed capital and two years for each searcher who does not close. At a recent acquisition rate near one in two, that is a portfolio problem, not an individual one.
Sourcing bought at portfolio level gives every searcher the same evidenced owner flow and gives the investor one view across the cohort.
Per active searcher
Each searcher receives a monthly flow of owners matched to their own thesis, with the evidence on every row.
A cohort readout
Coverage by industry and geography, conversations by searcher, and which theses need attention, every month.
From searchers and their investors
Specific to search. General questions are answered on the practice page.
01Isn't sourcing the searcher's job?
It is, and it stays theirs. What we replace is the six weeks spent building a list badly and the months spent calling owners with no reason to call.
02Can a self-funded searcher use this?
Yes. The work is scoped to one thesis and one geography, the way most self-funded searches are run.
03Do you also work the brokers?
No. Brokered deals are visible to every searcher. We work the owners who have not yet called a broker.
A search ends when the funnel does
- 01Your thesisIndustries, geography, size band and what makes a company right for you.
- 02Your stageMonths into search, owners contacted, LOIs to date.
- 03Your backersFor investors: the number of active searchers in the portfolio.