Traditional Search Fund Failure Rate Calculator
February 26, 2025
by a professional from The University of Chicago - Booth School of Business in Chicago, IL, USA
Introducing our Traditional Search Failure Rate Calculator - have you questioned what your acquisition chances look like based on your background, experience, race, gender, etc?
(In order to use our calculator, you will need to share the document as it is set up as View Only)
After analyzing ~1,400 search funds dating back to 1984, we built a Search Fund Failure Rate Calculator—a data-driven tool that takes into account race, gender, age, solo vs. partnered search, background, and more
- Up to 2020, acquisition rates were 65.4%—closely aligned with the Stanford study.
- From 2020–2022, acquisition rates dropped to 50.5%—a steep decline.
- Yes, race, gender, and amongst several things will impact success rates. And we're not afraid to talk about it.
Let’s talk about what’s really happening in search—and more importantly, how we can help you beat the odds along with what we are currently seeing search
from University of Melbourne in Melbourne VIC, Australia
A searcher should be more concerned with whether their profile sets them up for overall success in the ~10 year journey of search, than the relatively short 2 year runway of the search phase.
I would have thought it was better to back a searcher with a 40% chance of success of acquiring and a 60% chance of delivering eg. >2x MOIC, than the inverse.
The downside risk for both searcher and investor for a failed search is much lower than a failed acquisition. What about pulling together the data for the chances of delivering a return for investors over the total lifecycle based on profile?
from University of Melbourne in Melbourne VIC, Australia
I've seen presentations about reasons for searchers being removed, I recall they are commonly - searcher treating the role as a lifestyle job and not putting in the elbow grease required to grow the business, serious ethical breaches, and/or general poor performance and poor communication with stakeholders.