10 Common ?s Searchers Ask in Their Journey

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March 04, 2021

by an investor from University of Pennsylvania - The Wharton School in Washington, DC, USA

I've had 200+ calls with searchers in the last year.

In each searcher's journey, there seems to be a common set of questions each ETA entrepreneur/searcher asks themselves in their journey.

Here's my top 10 Common ?s ETA searchers ask in their journey (note - the order of questions can vary depending on answers):

1 - What's the best search framework for me: Traditional, Accelerator, Single Family, Independent Sponsor, Self-Funded?

2 - Should I do a solo search? Partnered search? If partnered, who should I partner with?

3 - What's my focus - geography? Industry? Where do I have an edge? Where do I have passion?

4 - What size to focus on? 300-500k SDE? 500k - 1.5M, 1.5m - 3M? Where do I think I can win? What size company do I want to run?

5 - What's my sourcing strategy - brokered? Proprietary? Both? What sourcing sites to use? What data to buy?

6 - What's my tech stack and strategy for deal sourcing & maintenance? Data sources? CRM? Email outreach?

7 - Who should I use for 3rd party advisory - legal, bank, accounting, QofE, due diligence, tech due diligence, insurance?

8 - Who do I want on my cap table? What skill sets do I want? Traditional investors? Self-funded investors? Folks with experience investing in the sector? Professional friends/family?

9 - What management philosophy do I want to run? EOS? Rockefeller?

10 - And then the deal closes & the real work begins. How do I drive value for my customers? How do I build a great company culture? How do I build momentum in the business? How do I keep sanity in the ups/downs of entrepreneurship?

What key questions am I missing? What's your answer to the framework?

As always, as a serial entrepreneur and active investor in search, let me know how I can help - redacted I also recently created a light-weight monthly newsletter with my "musings" - sign-up at bit.ly/etamusings

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commentor profile
Reply by a searcher
from Babson College in Cambridge, MA, USA
Thanks for sharing! I would only add some questions around actually assessing the target business, i.e current key employees of the target company - how to assess, when to let people go, etc. There are so many moving parts in a search and I think it's easy to get caught up in all these other questions - how will you form your search co. and who you should work with - that you can lose sight of the actual end goal, which is buying a healthy business at a good price!
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Reply by a searcher
from Purdue University in Chicago, IL, USA
Thanks for sharing. Any suggestions for solving #3 (where to focus)? My background is sales and digital marketing which apply broadly and make it tough to narrow down my search. My only "passion" is trying to figure out how to retire before 60.
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