Learn from self funded searchers in Iberia or Europe

searcher profile

May 03, 2023

by a searcher in Portugal

Dear Community,

I'm Mike and I've been helping CEOs and Leadership Teams to scale their businesses from 5 to $50M in the last 20 years as Fractional COO and Coach.

After multiple conversations with searchers and investors, I "bought" the ETA model and I'll do my search in Portugal, but I'm still not sure if I should go traditional or self funded.

Self funded is growing a lot in the US with the SBA Loan, but in Europe and Iberia, it is a very different environment.

Would love to talk with entrepreneurs with self funded experience in Europe, and even better, in Portugal or Spain. Please let me know if you know someone on your network that you could introduce to me.

Thanks so much and happy to help the community as redacted +###-###-####

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commentor profile
Reply by a searcher
in Zwolle, Nederland
Your community skills are outstanding ^redacted‌!
^redacted‌ we did some mix form:
- We had a good idea / businessplan to grow organical and via M&A and found an investor
- In the time we started, that investor payed costs, and in that time, we also searched for companies that fitted the profile.
- Now we are growing organical the most, as there are no compagnies in our space, and taking over other organsiations would cost more then building it ourselves. For the growth proces, we are in the run of having some kind of "growth" fund, where more investors can participate.
I dont know the Spain / Portugal investment world, but in the Netherlands, we also have some kind of SBA loan. But more and more, the % an entrepreneur should bring in himself are rising, and rules are getting more and more thight. In the Netherlands, we see also a move that government is investing via own funds.
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Reply by a searcher
from London Business School in London, UK
Hi Mike - If you are looking at traditional search fund investors, they seem to have criteria they seem to be looking for. You can find the demographics in the Stanford report. There was a podcast recently from someone who graduated from UNC, which is a great school. But he felt he could not raise a fund. So you might want to consider raising search capital might not be as straightforward as it first appears.
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