Top 10 Traditional Search Fund Investors so far Based on Polls

May 16, 2025

by a professional from The University of Chicago - Booth School of Business in Chicago, IL, USA

Over the past couple of weeks, we’ve been deeply humbled by the incredible engagement and support for the MBA Search Fund Alliance—a community-driven initiative to spotlight what’s working (and what needs fixing) in the search fund ecosystem. At Caprae Capital, we feel honored to help push the conversation forward—not through criticism, but through accountability, transparency, and collaboration. This poll may not be perfect, but its resonance reveals a powerful truth: many in our ecosystem care deeply and are ready to build something better together. 💠 After much thought and reflection, we’ve chosen not to publish the Bottom 5 but instead release the Top 10 to create a more collaborative environment. Let’s model the kind of ecosystem we hope to grow—constructive, dignified, and committed to progress. This survey evaluated search fund investors across six key dimensions: - Leadership - Honesty - Quality of Insights - Searcher Friendliness - Helpfulness - Recommended by Others With over 5,000 individual data points submitted and 115 fully completed survey submissions, this has become the most transparent and data-rich feedback loop the search fund community has ever seen. Today, I’m honored to recognize the Top 10 Highest-Rated Search Fund Investors (so far), as voted by searchers around the world. These individuals were consistently recognized for their support, guidance, and principled leadership: Top 10 Search Fund Investors (So Far): 🥇 Search Fund Partners — 3.76 🥈 ETA Equity — 3.72 🥉 Peterson Partners — 3.57 The Nashton Company — 3.56 The Cambria Group — 3.55 Red Forest Capital — 3.54 Marion Equity Partners — 3.44 TD Investments — 3.43 Relay Investments — 3.38 Futaleufu Partners — 3.38 Across 40 firms, the average score was 3.06, with a median of###-###-#### But the bottom 20% of firms scored below 2.78—a gap that’s hard to ignore. 🔹 The poll remains open until the end of June. Final rankings will be submitted to the MBA Search Fund Alliance for broader distribution. This is just the beginning. https://lnkd.in/eznmM8-4

Reply by an investor
from McGill University in San Diego, CA, USA

Nice work ^redacted‌! I think aspiring searchers are going to get tremendous mileage from this work once its published. A couple of ideas/suggestions 1. Would it be possible to show how many survey responses each firm got? For bonus points, would be awesome if there was also a column showing how many total searchers have been backed by the firm in question 2. Would it be possible to show how each firm did across the 6 criteria you chose in your survey? Along related lines, would it be possible to show which firms emerge as the best for helpfulness, honesty, leadership, etc... 3. If the response rate is high enough, I think there's also an opportunity to cut the data up into searcher responses vs investor. 4. Speaking of response rate, Searchfunder has a tremendous directory showing all the deals that have been done, and who the investors were on each deal. Might be useful to reach out to all the folks that have transacted. Similarly, Searchfunder has records for folks currently searching, and those no longer searching. To the extent that you get sizable participation rates, would be fun to see the responses broken out by transacted/searching/failed to find a business. 5. Might also be helpful to track down those that found a business but were then let go. Really looking forward to seeing the final results. Best of luck to you Kevin! This is a great initiative.

Reply by a professional
from The University of Chicago in Chicago, IL, USA

Ron/Ben: 1. Yes, the polls are still in progress so I plan to share the data much more surgically later on - total numbers, ratings based on schools, searcher/investor/operator/etc. Right now most firms have had###-###-#### submissions with a couple over 30 and a couple below 15 submissions. I think in a few weeks, most firms will have at least###-###-#### submissions. 2. Yes, yes, and yes 3. Yes, correct. 4. Yes our team loves Searchfunder.com. Without the site, we would not have been able to create the Search Fund Failure Rate calculator. We have a lot of respect for what they have built 5. Yes, we have about 20 so far. We have data that traces back to the board that was involved as well as the law firms that created the paperwork that may have made it too easy for the board to fire the CEO. We are running multiple research reports in parallel 6. Performance per fund might be super hard for now, but I would be curious just to see. My gut reaction is that there won't be anything too surprising. I don't see a scenario where a certain search fund investor is dominate like YC vs the rest. 7. For reason #6, I wouldn't think this would be the next level of research. If there was more diversity in thought/strategy in the ecosystem, there could be something there but there isn't too much divergence IMO

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