Thoughts on Partnered Search

One of the questions I get most often: what’s it like doing a partnered search? My business partner and I have been living that question. Here's the honest breakdown. The trade-offs -Requires a larger deal to pencil. Two salaries means bigger minimum deal size from day one. -Coordination costs are real. Alignment on thesis, broker relationships, and role ownership takes intentional structure. -Decisions can move slower. A solo searcher has a shorter path from thought to action. -The hard conversations can't be deferred. Ownership structure, decision rights, contingencies. Work through them early to build a strong foundation. The case for it -Complementary instincts, not duplicated ones. Katrina brings 12+ years in enterprise technology. I bring a decade of CFO and back office operations at a financial services firm. We're both Northwestern University - Kellogg School of Management MBAs but our functional lens is genuinely different. When we look at a deal, we see more of it. -Two networks compounding quietly in the background. More deal flow, more relationships, more conversations. -Motivation stays higher when someone equally serious is in it with you. It keeps the standard high, the discipline sharp, and the energy up, especially in the slow stretches. -The psychological weight of a search is real. A partner who challenges your thinking and sits with the uncertainty alongside you changes the experience. -We stand out. Two operators with complementary backgrounds pursuing an acquisition together is not a common profile. Sellers and brokers notice. -It's more fun. That's not a soft benefit. It's what sustains you through a long search. What makes it work → Trust and honest communication before you need it → Explicit alignment on ownership structure and decision rights → Clear role definition during search and post-close → Shared framework (ours is Kellogg) with different functional instincts → Aligned risk tolerance and timeline What makes all of it work isn't just skill fit. It's that Katrina and I trust each other's judgment, communicate without a filter, and are genuinely aligned on what we're building and why. That foundation is what lets the complementary skills actually function as an advantage rather than a source of friction. If you're weighing a search partnership, my honest advice: treat it like you would any other business relationship. Be rigorous about fit, explicit about structure, and realistic about the economics. The upside is real, but so is the work of making it run well. Happy to compare notes with anyone else navigating this.