All Search, No Ops?

professional profile

May 15, 2020

by a professional from University of Notre Dame in Singapore

Does anyone have any experience with a search fund model that focuses almost exclusively on the search and acquisition of targets, but shifts almost all post-acquisition operational responsibility to an operational partner (or professional managers). After closing on the deal, the "search partner" and search platform will continue to source new deals and bringing in new operational partners. If so I would like to hear about your experiences.

Some food for thought:

Thank you all in advance for your thoughts.


(Edited to fix formatting)

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commentor profile
Reply by a searcher
from Northwestern University in Los Gatos, CA, USA
Check out Salt Creek Capital (http://www.saltcreekcap.com/). I believe they primarily use SBA 7a as the senior debt layer, so are operating in the <$6M EV realm. We're working on something like this on a very small scale at the bottom of the market (e.g. job replacement search) also using SBA 7a (http://cubinvestments.com/searchers) . I am not sure but I believe most SBICs functionally work this way, and at the higher end as others have mentioned, PE and the fundless sponsors.
commentor profile
Reply by a searcher
from Claremont McKenna College in Los Angeles, CA, USA
What you are describing is essentially the independent sponsor model. Most Independent sponsors I've seen/worked with at most will assume a board role and seek a LMM PE fund to sponsor the deal and run it so they can continue to search for additional platforms. There certainly a lot of different models out there, but if you are looking to hand over control and not operate a platform after closing that usually aligns with LMM operationally focused PE funds.
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