Are Investors still getting 30% IRR?

April 17, 2025

by a searcher in Santa Cruz, CA, USA

I'm self funded and generally not planning to use outside equity. But current investment climate got me wondering if equity investors are still realizing and/or funding at 30% IRR? Obviously I think most people these days would love anything with positive return and low beta. I would certainly imagine there is enough powder out there that expectations must be coming way down. (though I think we might all agree that SMB might be somewhat insulated) I could certainly see an argument that SMB investor returns are more insulated than other investments. If that's the case, I think there would be a lot of demand for more accessible investment vehicles for folks with moderate capital to participate in a diversified pool. Side note: I would love to see the search tool include filter or sort by time. Hence adding the time to subject for future searchers. This will probably not be relevant in a month!

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Reply by an investor
from University of Texas at Austin in Austin, TX, USA

Neither me nor any of the most active investors I know assess self funded deals based on the IRR the searcher model shows. That's just fun with numbers. Pretty much everyone looks at step-up and anything under 2.0x is usually not a particularly good risk-return. Self-funded search deals are essentially micro-cap value stocks with a ton of leverage. The beta for these stocks is incredibly high. So in order to make up for the risk, the potential returns need to be high. the###-###-#### cohort of deals is probably not going to be anywhere close to a 30% IRR. There is plenty of money in the space and it's up to each searcher to push their equity as much as they want. Most of the experienced folks including us have done very few to no deals in the past 6-12 months as deal quality and economics are simply not attractive. If anything the logical reaction to the current market environment is to demand more equity as the investor. The SBA loans are more expensive - less cash flow. Entry multiples are higher - less opportunity for multiple expansion. Economic conditions are more uncertain and generally worse - less expected growth. So for the same deal (EBITDA and purchase price) I would probably need an extra 0.25x step up to make it equally attractive to a few years ago. We're certainly still in the golden era of self funded searcher economics. I expect the pendulum to swing back in 5-10 years when many deals that were done at a 1.5x step up returns result in underwhelming outcomes for investors even if the deal goes okay.

Reply by a searcher
from Cornell University in Toronto, ON, Canada

I think the expected returns will stay where they have been the past 12 months and that they won't materially change due to the new economic environment or administration because SMBs (particularly stereotypical search fund targets) are mostly insulated. Considering the current market, I believe there will be more demand for ETA, but supply has mostly been outpacing that. The growing number of searchers and availability of businesses for sale from baby-boomers is just greater. Slow deployment of capital due to economic factors accounts for the high dry power levels for PE/VC, but ETA isn’t as affected since it's a different market. However, as a searcher, definitely test the market and see what investors are saying. I'm interested to hear other opinions, and I think ^redacted‌ has a good pulse on the market, particularly for self-funded.

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