Updated: Searching Mid-Career

investor profile

October 15, 2020

by an investor from Babson College in Boston, MA, USA

I've recently updated my blog post about starting your search mid-career with the latest information.

When to start an EtA (Entrepreneurship through Acquisition) search in your career can be a vexing and very personal question. Should you do it now, or wait? And if you wait, will “life” get in the way? Are you driven by FOMO or concerned about never being able to break away from your career? As with much about search, answering the “when” question is an individual, and often complicated decision. This post is focused on mid-career searchers.

The number of searchers 25 years from now who will have launched a search mid-way through their career will be 2-3 times more than those who launch immediately upon graduation from their MBA program. Almost 40% of these “mid-career” searchers will have had operational backgrounds and another 26% came from consulting, unlike early career searchers who had predominantly PE/IB experience. While researching these “mid-career” searchers they told me the circumstances that triggered their timing, their motivations and the advice they would give to searchers following in their footsteps
You can read more in the blog post. Please let the community know your thoughts and comments below! https://jimsteinsharpe.com/contemplating/searching-mid-career/

Search On!!!

Jim Sharpe

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Reply by a searcher
from Glasgow Caledonian University in Glasgow, UK
Thank you Jim! Your post really strikes a chord with me as it mirrors some of the dilemmas that I have been grappling with in recent years. As a young 47-year-old, I went through the engineering apprenticeship and operational management route and was fortunate to have my employers fund my further education up to MBA level. As a consequence, I am now in the “Senior” or “Mid-career” category with 30+ years’ business operations experience. I am also lucky enough to have experience in acquisition entrepreneurship having made a prior purchase using a company that I started up 17 years ago with a colleague a met on my MBA course, which I did in parallel with working for a previous employer (they were aware and supported this).

For me the “Should you do it now, or wait” has been a key question that I have asked myself countless times over the last 12 years or more. I have always wanted to have a larger percentage of my time and energy on EtA, but the comfort blanket of having a well-paid day job building other people businesses (which I must add I have enjoyed), has kept me from making the leap of faith.

I have only stumbled across the concept of a searchfund in recent weeks and so grateful to you for sharing the additional resources on your website. I will definitely be reading further.
I do see the searchfund being a good way to assist buyers and sellers get deals over the line that might not happen as quickly through traditional financing options.
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Reply by a searcher
from Denison University in Boston, MA, USA
Thanks for a great post, Jim! What do you think are the chances of gaining investor support for the search fund without having any real operating experience? My partner and I are in our low 30-s, both spent ~8 years in private equity/banking, no MBA and we are based in a large emerging market. I see from Stanford studies that ~50% of searchers come from similar non-operating fields (IB/PE/consulting). Does such statistics suggest that investors actually do not have a problem with it and that the prospective searcher's dealmaking abilities can compensate for other gaps in his competences? What in your experience are the primary concerns of investors evaluating a prospective searcher? Thanks!
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