Columbia Team working on Cheaper Quality of Earnings Reports

Member resources:

Frequent asked questions:

What is Searchfunder.com?

Searchfunder.com is an online community of searchers, investors, lenders, brokers and other professionals. Over 80% of those involved in searchfunds maintain a Searchfunder account to help them network, hire, and mentor others.

What are the benefits of membership?

In addition to accessing the most active online network of business buyers, Searchfunder licenses research that is simply not cost effective for individuals. Access over 15,000 industry reports and 50,000 transaction financials. You also get monthly credits for contact information for your company sourcing campaign with the option to purchase more at drastically discounted rates. Searchfunder has pre-purchased access from these data providers in order to empower individual buyers and to help searchers level the playing field versus private equity.

Do you have deals?

While we are primarily a buy-side network, we do have hundreds of brokers that regularly post deals to the community.

Can I find an internship on Searchfunder?

Absolutely! We have the industry's largest intern job board. If you are considering a search, the first step is to help another business buyer so you can hit the ground running.

What does it cost?

Searchfunder is a subscription service. We offer flexible monthly, annual and lifetime memberships.

Monthly

$79 / month

Annual

$19 / month

Lifetime

$432 / once

Those who maintain an account with us for over 4 continuous years are permanently added to the community without the need for a membership.

Do I need an MBA to join?

While a large number of our members come from dedicated programs at Harvard Business School, Stanford GSB, Chicago Booth, and other top programs, searching is no longer reserved for the elite. With the current abundance of dry powder in private equity, and an increasing number of business owners reaching retirement age, good deals rarely go unfunded.

Post a question, deal, job, etc...

Make a post...

Complete registration to post.

by an investor from Columbia University
in New York City, NY, USA

2w ago

Columbia Team working on Cheaper Quality of Earnings Reports

Hi everyone! I'm working out of a team at Columbia that has built a custom AI model to produce Quality of Earnings (QoE) reports for search fund acquisitions. Right now even with an accountant in the loop for human verification we're seeing cost of production being significantly lower. I wanted to ask searchers on here if this would be something they could see themselves using, even a quick note on whether you think this solves a problem, or it wouldn't would be extremely helpful! Thanks

5 Likes

344 Views

reply by a searcher 2w ago
from University of California, Berkeley in Seattle Metropolitan Area, WA, USA

What does cheaper mean here? QoE is all over the place, from $500 up to $25,000 or more, depending on size/industry/scope. If it's a very simple, organized company with clean books, QoE providers are more of a check. But if it isn't, then a good QoE will provide a lot more under the hood, and the favored ones by banks are ones that will help facilitate a reconciliation or normalization that buyer and lender can get comfortable with. There were a few popular (social media presence in ETA) that were terrible to work with as a lender because they only wanted to provide a report and 0 insights/discussion or solutions thereafter (and they weren't cheap). QoE, on the lender side, could be used to substantiate a TTM and prior year's earnings whereas SBA otherwise focused on state of tax returns. Just curious where you're thinking this solution can fit.

reply by a professional-advisory 2w ago
from University of California, Berkeley in Dallas, TX, USA

Aaron, Keep me in the loop on this. A more economical approach (even if slightly higher granularity) is worthwhile in 90%+ of use cases. Before writing a check maybe I'd want a second look but the cost total cost may not be significantly higher. I'd be happy to test your method (confidentially) on a couple of real cases and give you feedback if that would be useful to you. All the best. Bill Cavalier redacted