I'm working with a young searcher (only 2-3 years out of college) that is interested in heading down the search path. Many would say that he is too young to acquire a business, but I think it is a tradeoff. Here is how I explained the tradeoff to him, curious to see how other people see the balance since I don't want to give bad or even reckless advise: At this point you have the luxury of following a more aggressive or more conservative path. The aggressive path is to seek out and acquire a business quickly as a direct target, and then build your experience within the business. The 'conservative' path is to build more experience and then seek out a company to acquire when you (or your investors/lenders) feel like you have the relevant experience. I think the conservative path might actually be higher risk. There are many benefits of the more aggressive, direct path: - The experience will be the most direct to what you are trying to do. No experience will be as applicable as just getting in and trying to do it. - You have fewer obligations now than you will for many years, so you can bring a sleeping bag and live in the office when you buy a company and nobody will miss you. If you start a family it gets a lot harder to find the time. - If you acquire a company with an SBA7A loan you will have to make a personal guarantee, which won't be worth much. After you have worked and saved for a while you will have more personal wealth at risk, whereas now you have little to lose. If you had a business go south you would be able to declare personal bankruptcy and rebuild with sufficient time (my understanding is that it takes around 7 years to rebuild credit [this is not personal financial advise and consult a qualified professional]). - If things do go well with your first acquisition then you would have more time to build on that and enjoy the success, rather than working for someone else for an extended period of time. - As you work longer you get raises and promotions, which makes it harder to leave. The size of the business required to replace your salary gets bigger and bigger as your personal compensation gets higher. The benefits of the more conservative path: - Less time commitment now, while you are working for other people, so you can enjoy life more in your younger years. - Less stress as you will have more experience and be more well prepared to handle the situations that arise during the course of running the business - It should be easier to find investors and lenders that are willing to front the money for you to acquire a business once you have more experience and are more established. - If you save more and have capital to invest into your business then you will receive higher returns on your invested capital, and therefore a better ROI on the effort that you put into the business.